Calculus Made Easy

by Thompson, Silvanus P.; Gardner, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780312185480
• ISBN10: 0312185480
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-10-15
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

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. 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.

Author Biography

Silvanus P. Thompson, born in 1851, was elected to the Royal Society in 1891. He wrote numerous technical books and manuals on electricity, magnetism, dynamos, and optics, as well as several popular biographies of prominent scientists. Thompson died in 1916.

Martin Gardner, born in 1914, has written several reviews for The New York Review of Books and was a Scientific American columnist for over twenty-five years. He lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 1998 Edition	1	(9)
Preliminary Chapters	10	(26)
Martin Gardner
1. What Is a Function?	10	(8)
2. What Is a Limit?	18	(12)
3. What Is a Derivative?	30	(6)
Calculus Made Easy	36	(3)
Silvanus P. Thompson
Publisher's Note on the Third Edition	36	(2)
Prologue	38	(1)
I. To Deliver You from the Preliminary Terrors	39	(2)
II. On Different Degrees of Smallness	41	(4)
III. On Relative Growings	45	(6)
IV. Simplest Cases	51	(8)
V. Next Stage. What to Do with Constants	59	(7)
VI. Sums, Differences, Products, and Quotients	66	(13)
VII. Successive Differentiation	79	(4)
VIII. When Time Varies	83	(11)
IX. Introducing a Useful Dodge	94	(9)
X. Geometrical Meaning of Differentiation	103	(13)
XI. Maxima and Minima	116	(16)
XII. Curvature of Curves	132	(7)
XIII. Partial Fractions and Inverse Functions	139	(11)
XIV. On True Compound Interest and the Law of Organic Growth	150	(25)
XV. How to Deal with Sines and Cosines	175	(9)
XVI. Partial Differentiation	184	(7)
XVII. Integration	191	(7)
XVIII. Integrating as the Reverse of Differentiating	198	(12)
XIX. On Finding Areas by Integrating	210	(17)
XX. Dodges, Pitfalls, and Triumphs	227	(8)
XXI. Finding Solutions	235	(14)
XXII. A Little More about Curvature of Curves	249	(14)
XXIII. How to Find the Length of an Arc on a Curve	263	(13)
Table of Standard Forms	276	(3)
Epilogue and Apologue	279	(2)
Answers to Exercises	281	(15)
Appendix: Some Recreational Problems Relating to Calculus	296	(30)
Martin Gardner
Index	326	(4)
About the Authors	330