Their cognitive capabilities are still good, in spite of TV, pointlessly obscene birthday bashes and Helicopter parents. Their concept of beauty is still unspoilt. While it is not the same as the later St Martin’s version – it is STILL a great work.Įnjoy! Math is actually fun! Calculus definitely IS!!Ĭhildren are like sponges. The original Macmillan version of the book without Martin’s contribution is available in the public domain. This is the title page of the St Martin Press edition (1998). Here’s a scanned picture of a page of the book! Hence, given half-a-chance, I would plan to sneak this in to the erdkinder’s minds. There were also other books (by Piskuno v et al) that I really began to appreciate subsequently – but all this was some 10 years after I graduated(!) from my alma mater.īelieve me, this book would make mighty sense to a reasonable 12 year old or even younger ones – if the mind is prepared. I chanced upon the Thompson book on calculus when I was trying to desperately understand & solve some practical problems of heat transfer in the wasted days of my entrepreneurship – and I was thoroughly bowled over by this incredible book. I really feel that Mathematics HAS to be approached via ecstatic books such as these. Now, I ‘studied’ in one of the well-known schools/colleges (which ought to know better, siddhir bhavati karmaja (chapter #4 of the bhagavat gita and all that), but I really wonder as to how this book was not used at all in our undergraduate years! Not even a passing mention of the book was made!! (But I should remember with gratitude that the physics department of my school indeed used the delightful Feynman Lectures on Physics – so it was not all gloom) That they also happen to have real life applications – gazillions of them! I would say that the book is indeed beautiful – it restores your faith in the pursuit of knowledge. “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 Integral Calculus“ I would say that you have to read this because as the book says (and delivers on the promise, faithfully): One may feel, after all, the phantoms of differential and integral calculus don’t trouble me anymore – so what’s the point? Besides, I got a good grade in Math 101 (also in Math 505) – I am in a cushy job with an MNC as an ‘ engineer extraordinaire’ spending my time (and earning my megabucks) in daylong meetings, boring conference calls & excruciating powerpoint presentations and… – and so, why the hell do I even need to go through that drivel again… ( I just realized that this classic, a real classic at that, has completed hundred years of its existence!) Having thoroughly enjoyed (actually a lame word like ‘enjoyment’ does begin to describe the pure exhilaration one feels studying a Martin Gardner or a Douglas Hofstadter or a Richard Feynman) ‘The Annotated Alice’ among many other works of Martin, I am reminded of that 1910 gem ‘ Calculus Made Easy‘ of Silvanus Thompson which was later updated and edited by Martin in 1998. You lived to a ripe old age of 96 and also did a great job of living, all the while! It is currently rubbing shoulders with the books of the likes of Isaac Asimov, JBS Haldane, Erwin Schrödinger, Enrico Fermi, Paul Dirac, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer et al and should be feeling happy now what a work of deep scholarship! What one fool can do, another can.‘ The Annotated Alice‘ of Lewis Carrol and Martin Gardner – was ( finally) returned a couple of weeks back by my dear Rama and I was fondly leafing through it, before sentimentally returning it to the library shelves. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. On the contrary, they seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.īeing 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. 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. With a new introduction, three new chapters, modernized language and methods throughout, and an appendix of challenging and enjoyable practice problems, Calculus Made Easy has been thoroughly updated for the modern reader.Ĭonsidering 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. Calculus Made Easy has long been the most popular calculus primer, and this major revision of the classic math text makes the subject at hand still more comprehensible to readers of all levels.
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