Calculus the Easy Way

If you want to learn what really matters, enjoy learning it, and remember what you learn buy this book. I am a doctoral engineering student. I first learned calculus from this book many years ago (I used it to teach myself before I entered college). The strong and intuitive grasp of the subject gained from this book has enabled me to succeed at all levels of math. Sure, later you will want more advanced books -- but those are common. This book is unique and exceptional. By the way, the other books by this author are also excellent.

My early formal education was in biology and later I attended graduate school for biochemistry. Along the way, I took classical physics, quantum physics and many other classes that required calculus. I was also a teaching fellow at a university and taught high school math, so I feel I can recognize a good text when I see one. This particular book is unique in that it presents calculus within the context of a story and uses problems that come up in the storyline as teaching devices for important concepts. This makes the book very engaging and shows how calculus can be applied to different types of problems. I also liked the balance betweeen theory and problem solving. In the past, I have found that some books focus on the theory and tell me more than I wanted to know. Others just threw problems at me without adequately explaining important theoretical concepts. I feel this book balances the two very nicely. While it is true that this book does not contain a lot of advanced topics or develop theories as much as others, it does teach you the "must know" concepts quickly and gets you to understand how to apply what you learn. I'm glad I knew about it in graduate school, especially when I was studying physical chemistry. If I didn't, I'm sure it would have been a much more painful process. Lastly, higher mathematics DOES NOT come very naturally to me. This was a helpful tool for someone like me and is likely to be for you if you are at all intimidated by difficult mathematical concepts.

I had a teacher in high school AP calculus who came into class, wrote the assignments on the board, and sat down and punched holes in paper while we had to read the textbook ourselves and figure out Calculus. Needless to say, it wasn't the best way to learn, except that it forced us to try to learn it ourselves. At some point I felt really lost, so I went to the bookstore and bought this book, and worked through it on my own, more out of interest in the fairy tale than the formulas. Toward the end of the school year, we had an academic competition, and with pretty much the knowledge from this book, I qualified with a superior rating on my exam for the state level competition. I highly recommend it to anyone who is struggling with calculus and needs something more concrete to make sense of all the weird symbols and abstract formulas.

This is an absolutely wonderful resource for first-time students of calculus, particularly those who may feel intimidated by college-level math. This clear and easy-to-read book may not be helpful as a review guide for those who are already knowledgeable, but this is not its intention. Don't wait until you're snowed under with work and incomprehension (as I did) - get this and begin using it the first week of class. I found it invaluable as a returning adult student who is not math-phobic (rec'd a 620 on the math SAT as a teenager) and yet still had difficulties with calculus before purchasing this book.

The best book for actually learning calc. This book will not give you the practice you need to succeed at the mechanics of calc, but it will help you understand it. The unique style of story telling makes the topic easy to grasp. I would suggesst getting this with a book that has many practice problems like Schaum's Outlines. Also, Harcoutt-Brace does an outstanding job with their College Outline Series.