Calculus Made Easy (Free book)
OK, it looks old and dusty, but Calculus Made Easy [PDF] is an excellent book and I strongly recommend it to those of you who are struggling with calculus concepts. It’s also great for teachers, to give you ideas on how to explain calculus so it doesn’t confuse the hell out of everyone. He quite rightly points out that many math text book writers are more interested in impressing the reader with sophisticated calculus techniques than explaining the basic concepts.
One of the early pages has:
THOSE BEAUTIFUL METHODS OF RECKONING
WHICH ARE GENERALLY CALLED BY THE
TERRIFYING NAMES OF THE
DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS
AND THE
INTEGRAL CALCULUS.
BY
SILVANUS P. THOMPSON
In other words, this was one of the first ever “Calculus for Dummies” books. Thompson puts great effort into explaining what is going on, rather than jumping straight into the calculations. He humbly calls himself a “fool”, but doesn’t treat the reader as one.
To give you an idea of how the book is written, in Chapter 1, “To Deliver You From the Preliminary Terrors”, we read:
∫ which is merely a long S, and may be called (if you like) “the sum of.” Thus ∫dx means the sum of all the little bits of x; or ∫dt means the sum of all the little bits of t. Ordinary mathematicians call this symbol “the integral of”.
Now any fool can see that if x is considered as made up of a lot of little bits, each of which is called dx, if you add them all up together you get the sum of all the dx‘s, (which is the same thing as the whole of x). The word “integral” simply means “the whole”.
The book is now copyright free. Grab the PDF: Calculus Made Easy.
[Thanks to Denise at LetsPlayMath for the link.]
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26 Apr 2009 at 12:52 pm [Comment permalink]
thanks so much for sharing this excellent book!
best regards,
an old fool
26 Apr 2009 at 12:56 pm [Comment permalink]
You’re welcome Solarhene. I’m glad that you find it useful.
26 Apr 2009 at 8:45 pm [Comment permalink]
i believe it can work and it will work
27 Apr 2009 at 9:59 pm [Comment permalink]
I’m so interested in re-learning calculus that I watched many different video tutorials, but I found this book summarizing Integral Calculus in its first 2 pages!
Thank you so much!
3 May 2009 at 2:05 pm [Comment permalink]
Thanks so much for posting this. I’m so glad I clicked on your link while viewing my friend Dana’s blog. My 9 year old read it and was very excited that it made so much sense. He’s currently taking Physics and some of the math problems were made to be so confusing so this will help him so much.
10 May 2009 at 12:55 am [Comment permalink]
Good DAY SIR,i want to know how i can get this text book,calculus made easy.i am mailing from Lagos Nigeria.thank u sir.
10 May 2009 at 7:49 am [Comment permalink]
Hi Lawal
This is an e-book in PDF form (not a physical book). The link is in the article above, in the first line.
You could print it out from the PDF if you would rather hard copy.
30 Jun 2009 at 7:36 pm [Comment permalink]
Its a brilliant book. Thanks for sharing the book
9 Jul 2009 at 9:27 pm [Comment permalink]
Thanks for sharing this book! It will be a great tool for my independent study students!
25 Aug 2009 at 2:29 pm [Comment permalink]
Thanks for great job well done. Do the same with other topics such as trigonometry and complex numbers
28 Aug 2009 at 1:54 am [Comment permalink]
the way you have started culculus is very interesting but how could one get the whole PDF paper?
28 Aug 2009 at 11:05 am [Comment permalink]
Hi Judith. The link to the PDF is in the article above! Do you mean that you want a hard copy? You would need to print it yourself.
2 Sep 2009 at 7:20 pm [Comment permalink]
if every mathematics topic could be introduced the way this has, then i sure no one will think of maths as the hardest of courses.
17 Sep 2009 at 5:34 am [Comment permalink]
make me realize the math is easy
28 Mar 2010 at 10:05 pm [Comment permalink]
one of the greatest books.. many thanks for sharing with us
9 Jun 2010 at 12:54 pm [Comment permalink]
I was contemplating purchasing a course on dvd called “Calculus Made Clear” selling for $60.00 US. Then I decided to google “Calculus Made Easy” and found your link to this great book. I read the intro and was amazed at how easy it was to follow. I will continue to read the whole text! by the way, I was searching for books on calculus for my son so now we can read it together. Thanks!
9 Jun 2010 at 6:01 pm [Comment permalink]
You’re welcome, Rod. Glad you found it useful.
15 Jun 2010 at 10:38 pm [Comment permalink]
i from iran and i don’t english.
ineed a study book reference and i have n’t book english and i request from you that a link book free download for laplas, integral ,…
thank you very much
16 Jun 2010 at 6:32 am [Comment permalink]
@Fatemeh: I’ll look for such materials and post it if I find any good ones.
26 Apr 2011 at 9:48 pm [Comment permalink]
Thanks
25 May 2011 at 2:01 pm [Comment permalink]
thanks! and great work which nobody cannot be appreciated for your effort for sharing such good book.
6 Jul 2011 at 4:29 pm [Comment permalink]
It can be downloaded at
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283
which is typed in LaTeX and the file size is reduced tenfold.
6 Jul 2011 at 7:28 pm [Comment permalink]
@Dalcde: Thanks for the tip!
11 Sep 2011 at 10:35 pm [Comment permalink]
if u r one of those looking to understand calculas at an elementary level,then u’ve got it here.Calculas Made Easy is indeed very helpful a book for those struggling to understand it as a concept.so do go for it , it is certainly one of the best materials available. go for it.have a nice maths day.
22 Jan 2012 at 9:51 am [Comment permalink]
Hi :
Thanks for the pdf on Calculus Made Easy.
I have always been curious and terrified at the same time of calculus.
Chapter One says it all. Getting past the fancy notation, helps a huge amount.
Kind Regards Ian Thomson
23 Jan 2012 at 4:30 pm [Comment permalink]
Hi! Ian,My name is percy and I teach Maths in grade 12. Please foreward me the calculus doc as I also struggle on calculus section.
23 Jan 2012 at 4:57 pm [Comment permalink]
@Percival: The link to the PDF is at the top (and again at the bottom) of the article.