Calculus Made Easy

Rating:
Summary: Great book, if a bit old fashioned
Review: This book is a great primer on Calculus and a good quick read before taking the dive into a Calc I college course. It's well written, funny at times (believe it or not), and Martin Gardner's notes give even more insight to the concepts.

But be wary this book approachs Calculus in a rather old fashioned way. My professor arrived at the derivative with a very different method than Thompson did. So you need to be able to see the underlying concepts and don't get too caught up on syntax.

Rating:
Summary: A TRUE CLASSICAL GEM IN MATHEMATICS
Review: Calculus Made Easy is truly a well-written book. 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. Though the subjects are frequently isolated for each chapter, Thompson has nonetheless provided insights to the degree that one could synthesize or put together these various concepts to formulate their own interesting problems and procedures.

With the great Martin Gardner to revise this classic and to provide further mathematical expositions, Calculus Made Easy is highly recommended for the lover of mathematics as well as the teacher who wants to better present mathematics from a thematic standpoint.

Rating:
Summary: Simple is better
Review: This is a highly recommendable supplement for anyone taking first-year calculus. It will take you all the way up to integration, and explains the concepts in both clear and simple terms. You will not even need much of a foundation in geometry or pre-calculus to understand the material in this book. Although I know there are some good calculus teachers out there, I can say for sure that Silvanus P. Thompson did a better job explaining the key concepts than my calculus professor. It's not that I had a bad one- it's that Thompson is obviously just better. While I would recommend this mostly to those about to or taking calculus I, it also makes a good review for those who slept through most of it. All in all, an excellent piece on a most difficult topic.

Rating:
Summary: Wow -- Calculus can be made easy!
Review: After going through three ridiculous classes of college calculus and not understanding anything about the actual workings and true meaning of calculus, I decided to just teach myself and bought this book. I have only read three simple chapters so far, but I have learned more than I did in three semesters of calculus!

I would recommend that any student who needs to understand college calculus read this book BEFORE taking a calculus class. I wouldn't rely on a college professor to be able to explain higher maths in a way that is understandable, particularly in a larger college setting.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book before your mind is poisoned with limits.
Review: I got this book a short time before starting Calculus in high school. It was clear and a very easy read, and gave me a big head start.
This book is put down by mathemeticians because it avoids limits. Thompson does it the 'ugly way', whereas mathemeticians prefer the 'beautiful way'; put another way, mathematicians like using a chisel to carve a tunnel; Thompson uses explosives.
Anyone who wants to learn calculus should use this book.

Rating:
Summary: Fulfills its purpose
Review: Since I had taken calculus courses before reading this book, I didn't learn any techniques or concepts that were new, and I can't say whether or not one who has never touched a calculus text will be able to learn the subject with speed. With this bias, I can still say that it is a book that is much easier to read than a textbook, and does not have millions of practice problems. So it would be great for a review of the subject, and *if* a beginner can follow it, then it would be great to learn from. At the very least, you will get the feel of calculus and what sort of problems it is intended to solve. Martin Gardner tries to clarify a few outdated things, and he writes about some additional problems related to calculus at the end of the book.

Of course, if you are looking to learn calculus in depth, this book probably will not suffice. It can't possibly cover what a first year college textbook on calculus does. But many people understandably do not want to trudge through difficult proofs and definitions, repetitive problems, and a thousand pages of text (though these are the things that sometimes pound concepts into your head).

A good read for a quick overview of calculus. Expect to solve some of the problems, if you want to learn something. And pay attention because near the end, it gets pretty difficult.

Rating:
Summary: Had to get my own copy!
Review: My classmate has a copy of this book. I borrowed it so many times, that I had to have an edition I could call all my own.

This book provides a friendlier approach to basic concepts in Algebraic and Trigonometric functions necessary to master Calculus.

Don't be fooled, though. This book is no shortcut to serious study and practice. Chapters are arranged in tandem order, which means that each lesson prepares you to master the next. For best results, do not move on to the next lesson until you are able to master the concepts. Make sure you put your name on your copy of this book. Everyone else will want to borrow it from you.

Rating:
Summary: This "fool" is doing it.
Review: What one fool can do, another can.

Or so goes the introduction to "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson. He's right, of course. I should know because I'm a fool myself.

One of the great things about this book is Thompson's surprising sense of humor. I just wasn't expecting a math text, written nearly a century ago, to be so irreverent. In fact, the author goes out of his way to slam the math professors of his day and their methods of teaching. Some things never change.

Speaking of fools. I flunked out of pre-algebra in the 8th grade, dropped out of high-school at 15, and did not return to college until I was 28. I had my sights set on a computer engineering degree; however, I knew that in order to achieve my goals I would need to go back and slay those math demons from my past.

After completing the algebra stuff with surprising ease, I now venture into "the calculus", as they call it. Just those words "the calculus" are enough to strike fear in the hearts of millions. Isn't calculus for nerdy, Cal-Tech types? Can mere mortals, fools even, understand how to integrate a simple funtion? It's telling that a rather large percentage of those who enroll in calculus every year end up dropping the class. What a shame, because as it turns out, according to Thompson, the real fools are the professors themselves.

Thompson's book will demystify much of the material from a first-semester calculus course. You will learn differentiation, integration, lengths of curves, etc., all quite painlessly (well, you'll have to put in the practice time).

Of course, one will need to be comfortable with algebra in order to pick up a book such as this, but trig and geometry are also helpful as some of the functions are trigonometric. I should point out, though, that you don't absolutely NEED trigonometry to do calculus. What little you do need can be picked up rather quickly from a book like "Geometry and Trigonometry for Calculus."

My advice: if you are about to enter a calculus 1 course (as I am), then spend some time with this book. It will give you a great head start on the class and is surprisingly readable.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent for for Beginners and as a Review to Calculus I
Review: After 8 years I decided to return to college to complete my B.S. in Computer Science, and to do this I had to take Numerical Analysis I. This class required Calculus I, but I hadn't seen or done any calculus since 1993. This book was an excellent refresher, and I actually understand calculus better than I did back in '93. The author really builds up a strong foundation before giving examples, and then he goes into the examples in extreme detail. He looks at the problems from many different perspectives, and doesn't try to show off - like most professors do in college classes. I would definitely recommend this book to beginners getting ready to go from Algebra to Calculus, or for students that need to be refreshed on Calculus.

Rating:
Summary: recommended reading for beginners and Calculus teachers.
Review: I have been teaching Calculus for the last two years, and I just stumbled across this book a few weeks ago. What I found was a book that explains the philosophy of the subject in a very simple manner, making it easy to understand even for people who are not proficient in math.

The concepts in Calculus are really simple things; as Gardner puts it, "the universe seems to favor simplicity in its fundamental laws". But there's always the teacher's pride, which leads him to make it all seem difficult, expecting the student to be amazed at how much the teacher knows. Alas the true result is that the student is usually left confused, loses interest in the subject, perhaps gives up on a career that he/she otherwise would have succeeded in, etc. I know about this, because I am guilty of it myself.

I recommend this book to people who:

1. Are just learning calculus. The book uses easy-to-understand language, simple examples, etc. Read about the binomial theorem before reading this book, though.

2. People who want to grasp the essence of calculus, not necessarily for a college course. Easy, entertaining reading; as stated earlier, the philosophy of the subject is presented in a comprehensible manner.

3. Calculus teachers. Definitely a must! This book is a good example of how calculus should be taught. Though you may not draw totally upon it, having read through Thompson's book can give you a good idea on how to organize your course and how to explain fundamental concepts