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Calculus for the Practical Man
- sillysaurus3 12y agoThe book is very dated. Are there any downsides to learning Calculus from this compared to a modern text?
- sitkack 12y agoIt is famous for being Richard Feynman's favorite calculus book. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZED4gITL28#t=79 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZED4gITL28#t=79
- corysama 12y agoHere are Scribd's for 3 of the 4 other books he mentioned. Can anyone produce better links? http://www.scribd.com/doc/139749115/1-Arithmetic-for-the-Practical-Man http://www.scribd.com/doc/139749115/1-Arithmetic-for-the-Pra... http://www.scribd.com/doc/88264564/Algebra-for-the-Practical-Man-Thmpsn-1962 http://www.scribd.com/doc/88264564/Algebra-for-the-Practical... http://www.scribd.com/doc/88269362/Trigonometry-for-the-Practical-Man-3ed-Thompson-1962 http://www.scribd.com/doc/88269362/Trigonometry-for-the-Prac... I can't find one for Geometry for the Practical Man
- sitkack 12y agoLook for, "Geometry for the Practical Worker" the series title has been updated.
- doxcf434 12y agoRather it was the one he taught him self calculus with as a pre-teen.
- nn3 12y agoCalculus is not like computer science. The basics haven't really changed in the last 60 years (and longer)
- mreiland 12y agolawl... ya, calculus changes so often, it's best to read a book from the last 2 years, otherwise you'll learn stuff that's no longer relevant...
- seanstickle 12y agoOur college textbook for calculus was Newton's Principia, which I suppose is also somewhat dated. However, I was able to obtain a sound working knowledge of calculus from that. Granted, I updated it a bit with Robinson's 1970s text on nonstandard analysis. The fundamentals prove to be quite timeless. I would say that there are advantages and disadvantages to learning from an older text, depending on what you're aiming to learn.
- JadeNB 12y agoThat sounds exciting! When you say "I updated it a bit", do you mean that your instructor did it for the whole class, or that you as a student did it independently, or that you were the instructor? I find Robinson's book pretty hard going, especially for a relatively introductory class, and would be very interested to hear whether or not this impression held for you.
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- sillysaurus3 12y agoWould you list some of those advantages and disadvantages? Contrary to the other replies here, Calculus has indeed changed over time, or at least how it's taught. In modern calc texts, there is an emphasis on limits and formal proofs. In old calculus texts, in particular this book, there seems to be an emphasis on intuition over theory. The question is a difficult one: Is a self-taught student putting themselves at a disadvantage by using an old text as their primary source of knowledge? It's a difficult question because it can only be answered by someone who's read both an old text and a new text, which seems rare. But here's hoping that the HN crowd features someone who's done just that.
- cabinpark 12y agoSorry if I am sceptical but I don't really believe your claim that you were able to obtain a sound working knowledge of calculus from the Principia. For one thing, Newton barely makes use of calculus in the textbook and instead opts for geometric methods. And even with that, he is not rigorous at all because rigor hadn't been discovered yet. I wouldn't even put it on the same level as modern textbooks since so much had yet to be discovered about calculus. I would not recommend the Principa to anyone except for historical interest. Everything in that book has been said more concisely by other people in the three hundred years since it was published.
- cabinpark 12y agoNot really. Intro calculus hasn't changed much in the last 100 years beyond becoming more and more streamlined. Although in a newer book you might see more modern applications and maybe some more streamlined proofs.
- teddyh 12y agoThis is the series of books recommended (or at least referenced) by Richard Feynman.
- kqr2 12y agoDid Feynman recommend or reference any other books besides this series?
- abecedarius 12y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_under_the_integral_sign#Popular_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_under_the_integ... I don't know about recommending the practical-man book; I don't recall him mentioning it elsewhere. He quoted "What one fool can do, another can" (from Calculus Made Easy) I think more than once. I've skimmed Calculus Made Easy and it seems nice, and short.
- matheusbn 12y agoWell scribd asks for registration to download. So after a little search, I've found the 2nd Edition here: longfiles.com/jq5ti168hjsy/MFSS_Clcls_2_Thmpsn_1946.pdf.html
- sitkack 12y agoEven though there is no materiel difference between the two links, Scribd is a YC company where selling access to copyrighted works is a business model, your link might get you banned. BTW: The first edition of this book is most certainly out of copyright, Van Nostrad would had to have filed a copyright renewal in 1959 which most did not at the time.
- tptacek 12y agoNobody running HN gives a shit about whether links will irritate Scribd, for what it's worth.
- stiff 12y agoYou can download the book legally and without the scribd BS from here: https://archive.org/details/calculusforpract00thom https://archive.org/details/calculusforpract00thom
- wyclif 12y agoThe Internet Archive really needs to update its website. It's not 1998 anymore, you know. I couldn't easily find how to view the book. Then I realised you can only "borrow" it and it is already "borrowed", so it is currently unreadable and tells me "this title is currently checked out."
- stiff 12y agoSorry, might be I pasted the wrong link in the end: https://archive.org/details/calulusforthepra000526mbp https://archive.org/details/calulusforthepra000526mbp
- mindcrime 12y agoOn a related note, for anybody looking for freely available maths texts: http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.ht... http://mathbooks.reddit.com http://mathbooks.reddit.com
- da02 12y agoA better link w/o registration or ads: https://github.com/da99/my_lib/raw/master/JE_Thompson--Calculus-for-the-Practical-Man.pdf https://github.com/da99/my_lib/raw/master/JE_Thompson--Calcu...
- quocble 12y agoPractical for 1979?
- zalzane 12y agointro calc hasnt really changed much in the past 100 years someone please correct me
- pizza 12y agoAnybody know "graph theory for the practical man" or "information theory for the practical man" analogues?
- ivan_ah 12y agoFor information theory, check out the book by Cover and Thomas. It's pretty much the bible in the field.
- keithpeter 12y agoSomeone ought to do Statistics for the Concerned Citizen with an angle on analytics and 'big data' and how these new applications of statistical inference may form part of decision making in the future. Having said that I have a soft spot for Thompson's text.
- cabinpark 12y agoMost introductory discrete mathematics textbooks should cover basic graph theory.
- ivan_ah 12y ago@stiff Thx for the better link! Looks like a nice book, though the writing isn't outstanding. If someone out there is looking for a free calculus textbook, I highly recommend this one: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283 It's old too, but the writing is very entertaining---the author doesn't take the subjects seriously, but keeps joking around about how everyone takes Calc so seriously. <shamelessplug>Hm... hm... I wrote a modern calculus book. It's not-free, but very affordable + it comes with physics. v4.1 is coming out next week...</shamelessplug>
- marktangotango 12y agoThe book is "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson. I had a copy of this some years ago. He skips delta epsilon proofs entirely and uses the infinitismal method to describe derivatives and integration. Makes for a very slim volume.
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