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Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent, Practical Tour of Calculus
Review: Calculus is very important today in many branches of science, economics, and other fields. I am a high school calculus teacher and will be advising all my students to get this book in the fall. It covers all the essential calculus material in a fun way, using pizza examples. Where else would you find a pizza chef teaching calculus? In what other books will you study meatballs rolling down Fifth Avenue? College teachers will also find this book useful, but you don't have to be in school to enjoy this book. My friends find this book useful for a review of calculus. The book contains lots of problems and answers to see if readers truly understand the material. The simultaneous discovery of calculus by Newton and Leibniz makes the author wonder why so many discoveries in science are made at the same time by people working independently. I wonder about this too.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent, Practical Tour of Calculus
Review: Calculus is very important today in many branches of science, economics, and other fields. I am a high school calculus teacher and will be advising all my students to get this book in the fall. It covers all the essential calculus material in a fun way, using pizza examples. Where else would you find a pizza chef teaching calculus? In what other books will you study meatballs rolling down Fifth Avenue? College teachers will also find this book useful, but you don't have to be in school to enjoy this book. My friends find this book useful for a review of calculus. The book contains lots of problems and answers to see if readers truly understand the material. The simultaneous discovery of calculus by Newton and Leibniz makes the author wonder why so many discoveries in science are made at the same time by people working independently. I wonder about this too.
Rating:
Summary: Really a neat book
Review: The clever concept led me to buy the book, and I definitely wasn't disappointed - great overview, but not too dry.
Rating:
Summary: Great!! But neccessarily incomplete.
Review: This book served to demistify the entire basics of the calculus for me. Without it, I'd still be wondering about the derivative, or about limits or integrals. On the other hand, it contains about 5% of the stuff in a real calc book, which is why I'm glad I've got both. Even today I refer back to this when the definitions Swokowski gives me are too obscure to understand. If you have trouble understanding calculus, buy this, not a copy of Schaum's outlines. This will open you up to fundamental concepts, and once you have those down, reading any normal calculus text will be a breeze. The book is also very poetic. Pickover is a great writer, besides being a great mathematician.
Rating:
Summary: A really fun read, and you learn Calculus too
Review: This is a great book on many levels. The basics of Calculus are clearly communicated. There are lots of interesting examples, and problems to solve. The story of the pizza parlor involves great imagery, and fascinating characters. Plus the chapters are short, which helps retention. I bought the book as a review tool. A lot of calculus help books are geared to just doing well on tests. Completing this book should help anyone to get a real, "feel", for the beauty and usefulness of Calculus.
Rating:
Summary: A really fun read, and you learn Calculus too
Review: This is a great book on many levels. The basics of Calculus are clearly communicated. There are lots of interesting examples, and problems to solve. The story of the pizza parlor involves great imagery, and fascinating characters. Plus the chapters are short, which helps retention. I bought the book as a review tool. A lot of calculus help books are geared to just doing well on tests. Completing this book should help anyone to get a real, "feel", for the beauty and usefulness of Calculus.
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