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Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]
- Safety1stClyde 10y agoIt's like "Calculus for dummies" except with pounds, shillings and pence, and Mrs. Ayrton's electrical arcs.
- allsunny 10y agoThere is an actual "Calculus for Dummies", written by Mark Ryan, it's a great book.
- payne92 10y agoOh wow. Imagine typesetting that in hot metal, many many decades before TeX and LaTeX!!
- gejjaxxita 10y agoI read this book when I was 14, it belonged to my grandfather. I'd completely forgotten about it but seeing it has really brought back memories.
- officialchicken 10y agoThere is a 1998 update to the book with "modernized" english (I think it is clearer while preserving a dated style) and some additional chapters. ISBN-10: 0312185480
- tzs 10y agoThat PDF is just a bunch of scanned images of the book. It's large and cumbersome in many readers. There is a much better PDF at Project Gutenberg [1]. The Gutenberg PDF is only 1.9 MB, compared to 12 MB for the scanned image PDF. The Gutenberg page for this book [2] also has a link to the LaTeX source for the PDF. [1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf [2] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283
- chefandy 10y agoAnd here's the github hosted version because gutenberg seems to be freaking out right now: https://github.com/nadvornix/calculus-made-easy/blob/master/33283-pdf.pdf https://github.com/nadvornix/calculus-made-easy/blob/master/...
- pja 10y agoSeems to be an ipv6 connection problem; if you add gutenberg.org to network.dns.ipv4OnlyDomains in firefox it works fine. Weirdly, I can telnet to port 80 & GET / on the ipv6 address just fine.
- userbinator 10y agoYou say 1.9MB, the Gutenberg page says 1.8MB, and the download itself is only 1.18MB thanks to gzip. The main difference is that the Gutenberg PDF is a transcribed, cleaned-up version. As much as this probably makes me sound like an audiophile, I actually prefer the raw scans over what may essentially be a reprint. They show all the blemishes, unofficial additions, and other marks that make the book look more "real" and give it character. In this instance, the raw scan has a picture of the cover, as well as an interesting note handwritten near the beginning: "Property of Edward M Sumner" with an address. IMHO these sorts of historical artifacts are worth preserving too. I've come across scans with random notes, bookmark fragments, and newspaper clippings included, and it's always fun to ponder how they got there. (Who is this person and how did he get the book? Is he the one who scanned it? Etc.)
- noam87 10y agoThis is why I love used books. My copy of Schopenhauer's collected essays has gone through 4 owners since 1914, all 4 of whom have signed and dated the front cover, all of 4 of whom have marked and underlined at different spots (including, now, myself). My copy of Riverside Chaucer went through two students before me. And they all pick up their own unique scents along the way (my girlfriend jokes that I only buy books to smell them).
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- mixedmath 10y agoFor what it's worth, this is available as a much leaner pdf [1] on Project Gutenberg now, including the TeX source that some kind person used to update it. [1]: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283
- OJFord 10y agoHeavens - I'd have never guessed titles like '~ Made Easy' were as old as that. I don't know why exactly, it just sounds modern.
- emodendroket 10y ago1914 is pretty modern.
- handojin 10y agoIndeed. Water cooled machine guns, fabric skinned biplanes, and vanguard communism were about to change everything...
- OJFord 10y agoIt's all relative. Obviously I mean that it sounds vastly more recent than 1914 to my ear. And anyway, I confess I don't know the industry at all, but I doubt anyone would talk about 1914 as representing 'modern publishing'.
- douche 10y agoIt's less than a decade from the cutoff date after which books stopped entering the public domain, so by Project Gutenberg standards, it is pretty modern.
- OJFord 10y agoOkay, fantastic, arguably a poor choice of word then. I think it's pretty obvious what I mean, and whether or not 1914 qualifies as 'modern' doesn't affect it in the slightest...
- arcticfox 10y agoNot a poor choice of words at all, modern must be understood in context and you used it correctly. It would be impossible to ever use the word without a debate on definition otherwise. "How do I build a modern web app? .. Here, I found some relevant resources on vacuum tubes!"
- thechao 10y agoI learned calculus from this book, as did my dad, and my grandfather. My daughters will learn from this book.
- emarthinsen 10y agoThis is, actually, a really good book. Don't let the cheesy title throw you off. I learned more in the first few chapters than I did after a semester of calc classes. Highly recommended.
- georgewsinger 10y agoI believe this was Feynman's favorite book on calculus.
- gigonaut 10y agoactually I believe that was "Calculus for the Practical Man" by J.E. Thompson and it is also an excellent read.
- kjhughes 10y agoSummer of 1980, going into my senior year in high school, I mentioned I'd be taking Calculus next year to a co-worker a couple years older than I. He said he had the best book in the world on Calculus, and he loaned me his copy of Silvanus P Thompson's Calculus made easy. I thoroughly enjoyed that book, benefited from its intuitive explanations, and forever appreciated his recommendation. If I may similarly influence anyone here, for themselves or someone they know, to read Calculus made easy to supplement their calculus coursework, I will be happy to have paid the favor forward in some small way. By the way, Kalid Azad may be our modern day Silvanus P Thompson. And he has better tools[1], which he wields masterfully, than just pen and paper. Recommended too. [1] https://betterexplained.com/ https://betterexplained.com/
- jacquesm 10y agoBetterexplained is right up there with the Khan Academy and Wikipedia. Between those three there aren't many subjects you can't improve your knowledge on from your livingroom. tx kjhughes
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- kalid 10y agoMuch appreciated, thank you.
- zdean 10y agoWould you happen to know of any websites, video series, books, etc that would be in the same vein as these 2 sources but geared towards very young students (elementary/middle school math)? ...so that they can understand it conceptually from a young start. EDIT: I'm working through Khan Academy with one of my kids...would like to find other resources as well.
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- impendia 10y agoI assigned this in an Honors Calc II class I taught at a state university. The main text was Stewart (decided at the department level), but I was teaching the Honors section which provided a good opportunity for me to ask for something extra. I had my students read this book alongside Stewart, and write weekly short essays comparing the two approaches. Many of the students turned in some quite good writing. This is an outstanding book.
- jstewartmobile 10y agoIt's crazy the kids have to pay hundreds of dollars for the horrible books the colleges require when brilliant things like this can be had for free...
- jacquesm 10y agoIt's not rare that supports the people teaching the class. Nothing like pushing your own book to students that just have to buy it. In some cases the books don't even get used.
- cat199 10y ago> Nothing like pushing your own book to students that just have to buy it. This is a very small fraction of what goes on - 1) Many many professors have not written a/the book 2) You're not going to sell 1000000's of books through the 1 class you teach every semester. A few, yes. But lots, no.
- mcguire 10y agoSince no one else has mentioned it, there is an updated edition available in print, with updates by Martin Gardener.
- knight17 10y ago> ... a 1998 update by Martin Gardner is available from St. Martin's Press which provides an introduction; three preliminary chapters explaining functions, limits, and derivatives; an appendix of recreational calculus problems; and notes for modern readers. Gardner changes "fifth form boys" to the more American sounding (and gender neutral) "high school students," updates many now obsolescent mathematical notations or terms, and uses American decimal dollars and cents in currency examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_Made_Easy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_Made_Easy Seems like a good update to a classic, but there are some in the reviews complaining about Gardner https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/dp/0333772431 https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/...
- transitorykris 10y agoThis is an incredible book. I'm a visual thinker, and while this book lacks all the glossy pages of illustration found in a modern Calculus textbook, the writing style helps develop that visual intuition. In the same vein of concise Calculus books, Serge Lang's Short Calculus is also great (if you need a refresher, or if you're just starting out). https://www.amazon.com/Short-Calculus-Original-Undergraduate-Mathematics/dp/0387953272 https://www.amazon.com/Short-Calculus-Original-Undergraduate...
- sideproject 10y agoWhy didn't any one tell me about this book when I was younger! This is so good. :)
- partisan 10y agoAs someone who struggled through calculus, this book would have made a huge difference for me. Just reading through the first few pages brought a smile to my face that someone could so plainly explain these critical concepts in such a familiar way. Why didn't my professors do that?
- sideproject 10y agoTotally agree with you. I did advanced research in computer science without fully grasping integrals - only if I had this book! But you're right, why can't things be like this? Then I think, there is a certain art to having the ability to explain something so easily.. props to reddit's elif subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/)
- jacquesm 10y ago> Why didn't my professors do that? Because to them it's obvious. Most maths teachers are so far ahead of the students they forgot they once were students themselves. I've had 3 different ones in high school and the difference was incredible. All the way from 'only the best students learn anything' to 'everybody earns at least a passing grade'. Maths and physics were the classes where the quality difference between the teachers stood out the most.
- taejo 10y ago> Because to them it's obvious. And to them it's wrong! Much is said in this book which is difficult (but not impossible) to rigourously justify. It took centuries for calculus to be placed on a rigourous mathematical foundation; this foundation (called "real analysis", largely developed in the 19th century) is quite different from the intuitive ideas presented in this book. The presentation here (in particular the idea that dx² is negligible) can be made rigourous through "non-standard analysis", but this 20th century development is less-known (in fact, unknown to many mathematicians) and perhaps even more difficult than real analysis. Rigour is not necessary to understanding, and can even be fatal to understanding, but it's how mathematicians work, and generally mathematics is taught by mathematicians.
- austenallred 10y agoI have nothing to say other than that I adore this book
- noam87 10y agoIn a similar vein: "Probability Through Problems": https://archive.org/details/springer_10.1007-978-0-387-21659-1 https://archive.org/details/springer_10.1007-978-0-387-21659... I love this book. What's the best way to learn a mathematical field? To discover it yourself, piece by piece! I wish this were a series.
- throwaway2016a 10y agoThe prologue had me hooked... I have never read anything like this in a text book. The self-deprecating humor immediately disarms you if you're the type that would go into something like this intimidated. I am definitely reading this.
- emmelaich 10y agoThat's a great prologue. A foreshadowing of the for Dummies/Idiots books.
- mumrah 10y agoIt's for sale on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/dp/0312185480/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492741701&sr=1-1&keywords=calculus+made+easy https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/...
- danm07 10y agoWish my prof in college gave this as a course reading.
- c517402 10y agoIIRC this the book Richard Feynman said he checked out of the library and learned calculus from. Also, Feynman made comments similar to those in the Prologue.
- ramblerman 10y agono that was Calculus for the practical man http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7398477-calculus-for-the-practical-man http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7398477-calculus-for-the-...
- madrik 10y agoFeynman had read both books. He mentioned the prefatory quote from 'Calculus Made Easy' in an interview given to Omni Magazine in 1979: "... I had a calculus book once that said, 'What one fool can do, another can'..." I have this in Chapter 9: 'The Smartest Man in the World' in Feynman's book 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out'.
- ramblerman 10y agoThanks for the correction, I didn't know that
- amai 10y agoI thought the book Feynman mentioned was Woods: Advanced Calculus: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/17dq5l/is_there_a_modern_day_equivalent_to_advanced/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/17dq5l/is_there_a_mod...
- metaphor 10y agoIIRC, Feynman mentioned Woods in the context of differentiation under the integral sign, whereas J.E. Thompson was in the context of learning Calculus as a kid.
- theCricketer 10y agoMIT recorded a set of Calculus video courses back in 1970s that they have since made publicly available. It is taught by a lecturer named Herbert Gross. His style of lecturing is clear, he states why things are defined the way they are and derives everything from first principles. There is an unusual mix of rigor and focus on building understanding - where everything comes from. It also taught me that math is about reasoning logically and rigorously and we shouldn't always rely on intuition (at least while doing math). Deriving almost all the basic calculus results that were drilled into me from the basic concept of a limit, deltas and epsilons was really refreshing. Compared to more recent OCW calculus videos, I found this to be better in terms of respecting the learner's intellect, presenting the whole proof rigorously and teaching the student to think a certain way. Calculus Revisited: Single Variable Calculus | MIT OpenCourseWare - https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-revisited-single-variable-calculus-fall-2010/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-006-calculus-revisited-... Complex Variables, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra - https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-008-calculus-revisited-complex-variables-differential-equations-and-linear-algebra-fall-2011/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-008-calculus-revisited-... Calculus Revisited: Multivariable Calculus | MIT OpenCourseWare - https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-007-calculus-revisited-multivariable-calculus-fall-2011/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-007-calculus-revisited-...
- mttyng 10y agoI watched those lectures in the early stages of my degree and, to confirm what you've stated, they helped me gain a more concrete understanding of the fundamentals of calculus. Highly recommended! Thanks for sharing.
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- ziikutv 10y agoSo a while back, I said I am going to start writing "Colloquial books" about all of the courses I took as I relearn all of the stuff in my and other Engineering Branches (minus the grade-gun pointed at my head). One of the first courses are of course Calculus. I skimmed through some of these video lectures, I wonder if I even should write books for this. Or simply href. Thank you for the share. Will be of great help to me come summer.
- mdturnerphys 10y agoJust about missed the attribution in the epigraph: What one fool can do, another can. -Ancient Simian Proverb Monkey see, monkey do?
- KSS42 10y agoA fool that can plainly explain matters to another fool is not a fool.
- fad92 10y agoDoes anyone have a recommendation in the similar vein for probability and statistics?
- ankurdhama 10y agoIn my experience, everything is easy if you DON'T try to learn it using analogies and metaphors.
- cool_shit 10y agoTerrible advice! I tell all of my students to find as many analogies as they can. You can never lose by increasing the number of ways in which you understand something. Analogies, some may argue, are at the heart of mathematics. > Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things Poincare. > The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality Hilbert. > The vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ. It is both and more. John Green. > Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things - like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. David Mitchell. There is an ounce of truth in what you say -- metaphors can be abused to draw false conclusions. This does not mean one should cower from using them.
- ankurdhama 10y agoEveryone has their own philosophy of mathematics. To me, the core idea is the idea of representations, such that those representations allow you to extract patterns (aka similarity or commonality) from various cases.
- nicklaf 10y agoI can't help but indulge a bit and now ask whether or not we can't extract a common pattern from the two representations of mathematical cognition offered by yourself and GP. :-)
- ankurdhama 10y agoNot here but may be on "meta hacker news".
- ashark 10y agoGood lord. I somehow took (and passed!) a year of high school calculus plus a semester in college, and I never had a good sense for the word "Integral" in a math context as anything but arbitrary jargon. And I've spent a not-tiny amount of time with BetterExplained's calculus. 30 seconds with this book and it's obvious. Now I'm making connections with the French (of which I have barely any, but any port in a storm) and it's solid in my mind. Well. Now I have to read the whole thing I guess.
- boyhowdy 10y agoAs someone who dropped out of Cal II, the first few paragraphs of this book gave me more understanding than I ever had in college... Either I was very lazy, or my teachers couldn't express these simple ideas clearly, or both.
- SilentM68 10y agoI've been looking for something similar to this but for Algebra, Trig, etc. before relearning Calculus and came across this: Mathematics For The Pracicle Man by Howe (1918?) http://www.aproged.pt/biblioteca/mathematicsforthehowe.pdf http://www.aproged.pt/biblioteca/mathematicsforthehowe.pdf It's targeted to Engineering students and it's not lengthy, won't take me two years to learn. Hopefully it'll be of same quality as Thompson's book?
- EGreg 10y agoThis is a good book. But on page 5 you have an error: it should say trillionth instead of billionth. I find myself liking your approach, though. You should change the font and insert some more diagrams. Oh, what's that... you can't just republish instantly because electronic computers haven't been invented yet? Well, just iterate and do things that don't scale :)
- nvoorhies 10y agoIt's actually circa 1914 British usage rather than an error.
- EGreg 10y agoReally? What'd they call a one followed by nine zeros then?
- dahtguy 10y agoNot sure what they called our definition of a billion, but that was definitely the naming scheme [0] [0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-is-a-billion https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-is-a-bill...
- contravariant 10y agoA milliard. The word is still used by countries that use the 'long scale', which has the nice property that a billion = (1 million)^2 and a quadrillion = (1 million)^4 etc. If you can count in greek this also means that an n-illion times an m-illion equals an (n+m)-illion.
- cat199 10y agoThis strikes me as a vastly superior way of doing things.. Any insight as to why things went 'the wrong way'?
- sundarurfriend 10y ago
- iamiam 10y agoSo many of these old textbooks are much clearer than ones of today. And they're no-nonsense, "What one fool can learn, another can learn."
- iamiam 10y agoSo many of these old textbooks are much clearer than ones of today. And they're no-nonsense, "What one fool can learn, another can learn."
- donquichotte 10y agoIt's funny that a book from 1914 is formatted in a way that it is much easier to read on my mobile phone than pretty much anything I can download from google books.
- agumonkey 10y agoThis popped on my twitter yesterday, that single page was more effective than 10 years of sweating. Speechless.
- circadian 10y agoJust the proverb used for the premise of the book has hooked me in: "What one fool can do, another can" Love it, thank you for sharing
- nvarsj 10y agoThanks for this - I had not heard of this book, and it looks remarkable!
- ensiferum 10y agoGreat book! I have a hard copy, really recommended!
- atc 10y agoWhat a lovely book. I learnt more in the first few chapters than I did a year at college getting a mediocre grade. Anything like this but for Logic?
- vixen99 10y agoReading it as a kid I wasn't sure I trusted the author - Silvanus P. Thompson FRS ('FRS' - which I knew to be something rather prestigious) when he wrote in the prologue "Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I've had to unteach myself the difficulties . . . What one fool can do, another can."
- Synchrono_us 10y ago6-14-43?
- martijn_himself 10y agoThis looks like a brilliant resource. My problem with advanced math is not so much the understanding of principles but the application of these to solve new problems creatively. I was able to master partial differential equations and pass exams but was never able to apply what was learned to solve new problems which I found very frustrating and was what ultimately led me to not pursue a career in the field.
- baldfat 10y agoThe prologue is 100% dead on and what I have always thought in terms of the easy part of calculus needs to be taught early. I would have never been able to vocalize what he said in the short half page of text. We teach math backwards. We have a population that can barely do 4th grade arithmetic and it is socially okay. Children and people believe that decimal points are accurate and that fractions are abstract when the exact opposite is true. 1/3 of a pizza is real and 0.333333 is a fake number. We also teach movement and change as a word problem i.e. a train leaves Chicago at 25 MPH and another train leaves Flint, MI at 35 MPH when will the trains meet? That answer is an estimation of an unattainable constancy but people believe it is logical conclusion. Pre-Calculus (needs to be repackaged with the idea of the one consistent in our world is change) should be taught before Algebra and Geometry. Make math into something where people can truly understand abstract and concrete. People actually think calculus is a hyper abstract algebra when in fact it is putting math into real world solutions. The number one problem is calculus is 100% dependent on the teacher. A great teacher will make this work and a lower skilled teacher can absolutely kill almost all learning.
- laughingman2 10y agoI think you this will interest you. Its a mathematician's lament on how the current system of teaching math is wrong. https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....
- djhworld 10y agoI'm embarassed somewhat to say this, but over the past few weeks I've been taking the courses on Khan Academy on mathematics. I'm nearly 30. and I'm not talking about brushing up on my linear algebra, that comes later, I'm talking high school level mathematics, stuff that I've largely forgotten or didn't "get" first time round. I've seen these "machine learning for hackers!" articles who try to dish out a bit of maths saying that's all you need, but I don't think you can escape the fact that sometimes you just need to start from the beginning and work your way up
- Accacin 10y agoI don't think anyone can ever fault you for taking the initiative and learning it in your own time. I feel the same way though, I've been looking back through some basic algebra on Khan Academy too because I feel maths is very much my weak point.
- andai 10y agoMy mom always told me I'd need better Math grades to become a programmer. Since the 2nd program I ever wrote was a script to do my math homework for me, I laughed at her. Then I failed to pass the first year of CS bachelor. Twice. I am very glad to see this most excellent book here, and will add it to my collection.
- jimmaswell 10y agoHow did that happen? The required math courses got in the way?
- J-J 10y agoAlso attempting to finish CS BS but I have hit a wall in my late 30s unable to pass pre-calc. I shudder at the daunting levels of Calc that come after to the point that I'm debating switching majors just to "get a degree".
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- apo 10y agoAfter scanning for a few minutes, I was amazed at how readable the book is given its age and my experience with books of similar age. The book also does appear to go out of its way to keep language simple. For example: We call the ratio dx/dy "the differential coefficient of y with respect to x." It is a solemn scientific name for this very simple thing. But we are not going to be frightened by solemn names, when the things themselves are so easy. Instead of being frieghtened we will simply pronounce a brief curse on the stupidity of giving long crack-jaw names; and, having relieved our minds, will go on to the simple thing itself, namely the ration dx/dy.
- allsunny 10y agoI have an embarrassing amount of Calculus books. My dad taught the subject in a high school and community college; I suppose I have a soft spot for it. "Calculus Made Easy" is a good book though I do think there are better ones these days. Some of the lexicon has changed and there are topics covered in a modern Calculus textbook that aren't covered in the original book (that I personally think are worthwhile spending time on). The updated version with Martin Gardner does have blurbs where necessary to point it out. The Kline book is a MUCH larger read, but is what I would recommend if you want a reasonably priced Calculus book that's easy to grok. Otherwise, I think it's hard to go wrong w/ the Stewart books. Work through the problems as they do in the book, you will come away w/ what you need. Finally, if you want a whirlwind tour, Calculus for Dummies by Mark Ryan is great. Time spent learning Calculus is worthwhile; and if nothing else, understand the fundamental theorem. Overwhelmingly impressive.
- xchip 10y agoDisappointing, I thought this was about making renal calculus... (joke)
- hilldex 10y agoI love how the first page (Ch. 1) tries to show that 'terrifying' calculus symbols have very simple meanings, and so there's no reason to run away. Less pleased, though not at _all_ surprised, that the book addresses 'fifth form boys', with no mention of girls.
- neuronexmachina 10y agoFun fact: The author Silvanus Thompson was an early pioneer of what is now known as transcranial magnetic stimulation. You can see him posing with his head in a device for testing neurophysiological effects of alternating magnetic fields in figure 4 of this paper: http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/61/1/5.figures-only http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/61/1/5.figure...
- InclinedPlane 10y agoI love calculus, it's such an amazing collection of fascinating, elegant (and useful!) concepts that give you a transformative insight on mathematics in general. It's very frustrating to see it taught so poorly so often though. One problem that teaching calculus has is that it's very dependent on having a solid foundation in other mathematics such as advanced algebra, trig, etc. In today's school systems that encourage gaming the system as students and teaching to the test as educators it's rare for most students to actually understand or be competent with material they've allegedly studied. When they hit something that starts off where they left off and builds upwards, if they have any weaknesses in that foundation it will show immediately and slow them down immensely. Add on to that all the other problems of typical calculus instruction such as a desire to make it hard as a matter of protecting calculus education as a status symbol for "smart" people, the ability to ratchet up the difficulty arbitrarily through requiring memorization of a potentially infinite set of "trivia" (every trig. identity, every method of differentiation/integration, and so on), while generally not concentrating on the abstract concepts or the fundamentals.
- Simorgh 10y agoThis book is staggering. I'm on page 1. I've read a couple of dozen lines. This has explained more about calculus then a decade and a half of seeing related concepts.
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoFirst chapter alone is a jewel. This is how great teachers sound like!
- mrcactu5 10y agoi know this is supposed to be a beginner textbook, but his discussion of infinitesimal geometry uses an awful amount of Scheme Theory to justify.
- mrcactu5 10y agothese figures are so exquisite and the typography lazily guides me through
- jaclaz 10y agoIn Italy there is a "similar" (in the sense that it manages to explain calculus in a friendly and easy manner) book, that has been re-edited and re-published since - I believe - 1929 or so: https://books.google.it/books?id=oHPmx_v1H6QC&pg=PP5&hl=it&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.it/books?id=oHPmx_v1H6QC&pg=PP5&hl=it&s... the original is French, the Author Gustave Bessiere was an engineer, mathematician and inventor: https://books.google.it/books/about/Le_calcul_intégral_facile_et_attrayant.html?id=d7tKMQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.it/books/about/Le_calcul_intégral_facil... I don't think they are (yet) copyright free, though.