Wow this is so awesome. I'm sleep deprived, not really willing to learn more about any math but the prologue and intro are so captivating that I'm still reading it.
Well done!
Calculus Made Easy (1910)
11–20 of 76 posts
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#12Nice. I have the Martin Gardner version of this.
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#13The beginning calculus book for me is Gilbert Strang's Calculus. https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/resources/Strang/Edited/Calculus... Calculus Made Easy seems too dumbed down to me.
Did you read it? The book was aimed at school children who would have taken the then British matriculation. I don't think they are the target audience for Strang's book.
British matriculation is entry to university, no?
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#14The beginning calculus book for me is Gilbert Strang's Calculus. https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/resources/Strang/Edited/Calculus... Calculus Made Easy seems too dumbed down to me.
The OP website recommend Strang's Calculus as a second text.
Please don't insult people earlier in their education than you with slurs like "dumbed down". Education is not a competition, you don't need to elevate yourself by calling others inferior.
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#15Although the calculus concepts from 1910 may still be relevant, quotes like these make the book outputting -- "The preliminary terror, which chokes off most fifth-form boys from even attempting to learn how to calculate..." Ugh!
What's wrong with that?
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#16LOVE IT!!!!!
"
PROLOGUE
Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks.
Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult. The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics — and they are mostly clever fools — seldom take the trouble to show you how easy the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.
Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can. "
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#17Although the calculus concepts from 1910 may still be relevant, quotes like these make the book outputting -- "The preliminary terror, which chokes off most fifth-form boys from even attempting to learn how to calculate..." Ugh!
Really? That's kind of interesting. I find the language completely charming. With this quote it could be because "fifth-form" has no resonance at all with me outside of the text, or maybe I vaguely recall some novel of Fitzgerald's, or maybe Salinger. I dunno. To each her (or his) own.
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#18Sorry for the interruption ; here is a thread (with 188 comments) about this book from a year back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14161876
Here is a link from the comments that includes a high-quality PDF of the text instead of page scans:http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf?session_i...
Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#19The beginning calculus book for me is Gilbert Strang's Calculus. https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/resources/Strang/Edited/Calculus... Calculus Made Easy seems too dumbed down to me.
The OP website recommend Strang's Calculus as a second text. Please don't insult people earlier in their education than you with slurs like "dumbed down". Education is not a competition, you don't need to elevate yourself by calling others inferior.
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Re: Calculus Made Easy (1910)
#20"Most college calculus texts weigh a ton; this one does not — it just gets to the point. This is how I learned calculus: my uncle gave me a copy." - John Baez (Mathematical Physicist; people here may know him from his work with/writing on Category Theory)
—that's how I originally came across this book (reading Baez's recommended math texts for various subjects).
There's kind of a funny story/legacy behind the book too: Thompson originally published the book under "F.R.S." disguising his actual identity, but letting his peers know it was written by one of their own—a Fellow of the Royal Society—in spite of his knowing that they'd disapprove of the book.
I'd read somewhere, too (maybe in Gardner's preface?), that it remains a 'secret favorite' of many mathematicians who wouldn't welcome the social consequences of admitting this.