Calculus Made Easy

by Silvanus P. Thompson

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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 show more by going about it in the most difficult way. show less

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7 reviews
This book introduces the concepts of The Calculus in a different way. This method of Thompson skips the idea of limits and instead focuses more on some tricks that one can use to ease into The Calculus. It includes a number of problems to do and covers most of the basics of differential and integral Calculus. I enjoyed it, but I didn't have any need to go into any real depth so I skimmed over the problems, which probably lowered my understanding. However, I have had Calculus in a classroom setting before.

Bottom line, this book is pretty good. I liked the approach taken by Thompson in this work, and the edits by Martin Gardner made it more accessible to a modern audience.
I'm a software developer and have had my interests in Mathematics for quite some time now. But my knowledge about Calculus was very limited. Hence I picked up this book.

The book has real simple language and of course since this a book about an advanced concept, the reader is expected to have some background in Mathematics.

The author provides some examples practicing which gets the concepts ingrained in the readers' mind. I'll be honest, I didn't solve most of the problems (that was not my intention of reading the book either).

The book goes into some depth and talks about chain rule, product rule and the quotient rule in Differential Calculus.

It would've made it the book better if it had a chapter on Limits as well.
Although Thompson's 1910 text has been revised and modernized, it remains at bottom a utilitarian approach to learning to calculate the solutions to calculus problems. So, while it's not suitable as a text, it may be useful to those having trouble understanding the theory of the calculus but needing it as a tool.
Didn't get very far with this ( Understood the prolouge and that was about it ) Not ready for calculus easy or not I guess
A good conceptual help to the study of calculus with practice problems.
Didn't get very far with this ( Understood the prolouge and that was about it ) Not ready for calculus easy or not I guess

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Canonical title
Calculus Made Easy
Alternate titles
Calculus made easy : being a very-simplest introduction to those beautiful methods of reckoning which are generally called by the terrifying names of the differential calculus and the integral calculus
Original publication date
1910

Classifications

Genres
Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Science & Nature
DDC/MDS
515Natural sciences & mathematicsMathematicsAnalysis
LCC
QA303 .T45ScienceMathematicsMathematicsAnalysis
BISAC

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Members
908
Popularity
29,432
Reviews
6
Rating
(3.87)
Languages
English, German
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
31
ASINs
31