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Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

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Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#61

Post by kalid »

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…

Thanks so much for the kind words.

I vividly remember cramming for a test my freshman year of college, not having things click, and the final Aha! when a semester of pain disappeared with a few visualizations. The contrast between how most classes presented the material and what actually worked for me was jarring, and I had to share what helped. I hope other people share what works for them, in any format they can.

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#62

Post by kalid »

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

Much appreciated, thank you.

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#63

Post by cool_shit »

ankurdhama wrote: post #55

In my experience, everything is easy if you DON'T try to learn it using analogies and metaphors.

Terrible 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.

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#64

Post by SilentM68 »

I'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 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?

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#65

Post by [deleted] »

theCricketer wrote: post #51

MIT 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 r…

[deleted]

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#66

Post by pervycreeper »

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

>There is a much better PDF

LaTeX is not an aesthetic cure-all. The original, at least, has been subjected to the critical eye of a typesetter. There is no disputing taste, but I will anyway. If you're using an e-paper device, btw, you can vectorize the text in scanned pdfs like this by applying "Clearscan" in Acrobat, or the equivalent (after which, it becomes readable).

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#67

Post by ziikutv »

theCricketer wrote: post #51

MIT 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 r…

So 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.

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#68

Post by tedd4u »

theCricketer wrote: post #51

MIT 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 r…

Thanks for sharing this - watched the intro lecture and I'm hooked! This is my idea of "Netflix & chill"

Re: Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]

#69

Post by EGreg »

This 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 :)

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