The Calculus Diaries - Jennifer Ouellette [1]
—Michael Sims, author of Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form
“Zombies? Surfing? Gambling? Nobody told me calculus could be like this. To my twelfth-grade math teacher: I demand a do-over!”
—Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution
“Like the movies Batman Begins, Spider-Man, or Superman, The Calculus Diaries is the story of how an insightful, creative, and hard-working young person acquires superpowers and uses them for the benefit of society. Only this tale is true: Jennifer Ouellette can’t fly or spin a web, but she can spin a yarn. The Calculus Diaries documents the author’s seduction by mathematics and her conquering of it—Eureka!—to see the world with sharper vision. For too many people, math—calculus in particular—is an albatross. But Ouellette reveals math for what it is: a powerful tool for solving problems and the exquisite language we use to describe nature. Reading this book will make you smarter. And more powerful.”
—Eric Roston, author of The Carbon Age
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First published in Penguin Books 2010
Copyright © Jennifer Ouellette, 2010
All rights reserved
Illustrations by Jason Torchinsky. © 2009 Jason Torchinsky
Figures in Appendix 1 by Sean Carroll
eISBN : 978-1-101-45903-4
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For Sean, the sine to my cosine.
Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since one who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences, or the things of this world. And what is worst, those who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance, and so do not seek a remedy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book grew out of my impulsive Internet purchase of a DVD lecture series, Calculus Made Clear, offered by the Teaching Company. The instructor, a math professor at the University of Texas-Austin, named Michael Starbird, combined the necessary rigor—in the form of simple diagrams and derivations—with an appealing (to me) conceptual approach, punctuated with colorful historical anecdotes. Nothing makes an English major happier than a compelling narrative. Tell us a good story and we’ll follow you anywhere, even into the minefield of scary calculus equations. Starbird’s lectures inspired me first to write a series of blog posts on Cocktail Party Physics about my adventures exploring calculus, and then to expand those into a full-length book.
But Starbird had the advantage of working with fertile ground. I owe a great debt to Alan Chodos, a physicist who taught for years at Yale University before becoming associate executive officer of the American Physical Society. That gift for teaching never really left him. Alan not only encouraged me