It divides into over 20 chapters thorough examples and applications of calculus as well as the development of calculus itself, and everything is surprisingly contained in fewer than 300 pages! Authors of many modern-day calculus textbooks twice its size try to explain the same fundamental concepts but cannot achieve Thompson's levels of triumph.Topics in this work include: limits, maxima, minima, successive differentiation, compound interest, law of organic growth, and more.
It's a great book and an absolute must for anyone taking their first stab at calculus, especially if your professor is from Bangledesh and bribed someone to pass the TOEFL.Ĭalculus Made Easy is truly a well-written book. If you're like me, you'll find yourself wondering what all the fuss was about after working through this book. Thompson's relatively down to Earth and casual style helped me get excited about math again. The obviousness of the Fundamental Theorem doesn't make it any less significant, but it does prove that the "hardness" of math is a function of how pretentious the expositor is. Anyone who couldn't "derive it" when needed should probably switch to a career that involves flame broiling and extra cheese. A Definite Integral for instance, which is governed by something audaciously called The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, is subtraction - fricking subtraction.
Mathematicians have a habit of making very simple concepts sound more complicated than they are. It's incredible beauty and power comes from it's simplicity. After reading this book, I realized that calculus is really very simple and is based on a relatively small set of simple rules. This is not a system that often rewards clarity or readable prose. A textbook author's primary goal is to solicit the approval and support of other academics. The dirty little secret of the textbook world is that students don't pick textbooks, so meeting a student's needs isn't a publisher's goal. The mathematicians who write textbooks are invariably sadistic cretins with either no aptitude for effective communication or contempt for it.
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