https://calculusmadeeasy.org

Calculus Made Easy

by
Silvanus P. Thompson

                 What one fool can do, another can.

                      (Ancient Simian Proverb.)

Table of Contents

  * Prologue
  * I. To Deliver You From The Preliminary Terrors
  * II. On Different Degrees of Smallness
  * III. On Relative Growings
  * IV. Simplest Cases
  * V. Next Stage. What to do with Constants
  * VI. Sums, Differences, Products and Quotients
  * VII. Successive Differentiation
  * VIII. When Time Varies
  * IX. Introducing a Useful Dodge
  * X. Geometrical Meaning of Differentiation
  * XI Maxima and Minima
  * XII. Curvature of Curves
  * XIII. Other Useful Dodges
  * XIV. (a) On true Compound Interest and the Law of Organic Growth
  * XIV. (b) The Die-away Curve
  * XV. How To Deal With Sines And Cosines
  * XVI. Partial Differentiation
  * XVII. Integration
  * XVIII. Integrating as the Reverse of Differentiating
  * XIX. On Finding Areas by Integrating
  * XX. Dodges, Pitfalls, and Triumphs
  * XXI. Finding some Solutions
  * Epilogue and Apologue
  * Table of Standard Forms

About this book

    Calculus Made Easy is a book on calculus originally published in
    1910 by Silvanus P. Thompson, considered a classic and elegant
    introduction to the subject.
    From Wikipedia

    I read "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson and it's
    still to this day my inspiration for explaining complex technical
    topics to lay people. It's a fantastic book, and even if you know
    math you must read it if you want to understand how to teach
    complexity to others. (source)
    -- Zed Shaw
    Author of Learn Code the Hard Way

    Thompson creates a warm, inviting environment where students will
    learn and grasp the true essence of calculus without any added
    fluff or overt technicality. (source)
    -- MathBlog

    Most college calculus texts weigh a ton; this one does not -- it
    just gets to the point. This is how I learned calculus: my uncle
    gave me a copy. (source)
    -- John Baez
    Mathematical physicist, author of n-Category Cafe

Buy paper version

[cover]

On Amazon.com*

Second hand from Biblio.com*

What next?

    [strang]
  * I have enjoyed Calculus, Second edition* by Gilbert Strang. It is
    similar to Calculus Made Easy but is more advanced.


    [needham]
  * Visual Complex Analysis* is legendary. Just as Calculus Made
    Easy, it uses a geometrical approach instead of the usual
    symbolic one.


    [strogatz]
  * Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos* is another more advanced textbook
    that is famous for its great pedagogy. You can also find
    Strogatz's lectures on youtube.

* Affiliate link




About this edition & thanks

This text is based on the PDF version from Project Gutenberg
converted to html by hand.

Thanks to Paula Appling, Don Bindner, Chris Curnow, Andrew D. Hwang
and Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team for
preparing the original PDF.

The theme is borrowed from Dive Into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim released
under the CC-BY-3.0 license.

Full legal notices. Github page.

Please send corrections, suggestions, and comments to
nadvornik.jiri@gmail.com