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Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

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Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#21

Post by jacquesm »

kjhughes wrote: post #13

Summer 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 influenc…

Betterexplained 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

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#23

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
kjhughes wrote: post #13

Summer 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 influenc…

Betterexplained 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

[deleted]

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#26

Post by partisan »

sideproject wrote: post #22

Why didn't any one tell me about this book when I was younger! This is so good. :)

As 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?

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#27

Post by OJFord »

emodendroket wrote: post #17
OJFord wrote: post #8

Heavens - I'd have never guessed titles like '~ Made Easy' were as old as that. I don't know why exactly, it just sounds modern.

1914 is pretty modern.

It'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'.

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#30

Post by userbinator »

tzs wrote: post #6

That 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 [2] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283

You 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.)

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