Customer Reviews

Calculus Made Easy

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I actually purchased this book AFTER I had been an optical engineer for 15 years because my other two calculus books were, how you say, not so good for re-learning (or learning in the first place, for that matter). Thompson explains everything clearly, giving you the details you need to understand the subject matter. Honestly, it's the only book you'll need as an introduction to calculus. Covers limits, derivatives, integrals, etc., and provides a lot of tricks to use to simplify various problems. Includes exercises with answers to the odd-numbered questions, which is certainly helpful to the learning process.

Highly recommended. Higher-level math was never my strong suit in college, so if you want to learn calculus, this book is likely to be your best bet.

Hello! Silvanus Thompson wrote an excellent book. I can see why this is a classic. He does a really good job of explaining calculus in a language that is both simple and understandable. However, I do have an issue with this edition. It is in deplorable shape concerning the format of the text -- pages are out of order, words are missing, and sometimes the text encroaches on the inner margin so far that it is hard to read (you have to open the book really wide).

Overall, I give Silvanus Thompson an 'A+' for making a hard topic easy but, unfortunately, the formatting of the text gets a 'D'. It is readable and you can guess the words that are missing, but it's sheer laziness on the part of the publisher.

I didn't buy this book for a calculus class but just to gain a better understanding of calculus concepts on my own -- it hit the nail on the head! I highly recommend 'Calculus Made Easy' by Silvanus Thompson for learning calculus on your own.

This book overall is a great tool to teach calculus to yourself or someone else. It shows different calculations in ways I have never seen before, showing me a different side of calculus. The only downside to this book is some of the the old methods it insists on making you learn. I would definately recomend this book to anyone who is trying to learn calculus.

I agree with the 5-star reviews. Many college texts are not meant for self study. This makes them unecessarily difficult.

Every beginning calculus student should have this book.

This book was originally published around 1900 and it is still in print. WOW! My copy was dated 1913.

My daughter and her friends used it, my grandchildren and their friends used it.

The edition I used had a photo of the author at his desk. He was holding his pen in an unorthodox manner. When I tried it I was able to write faster. This was very handy for taking notes in class.

Just a quick review. This book can really explain things easier than what my text book does. Though some pages of the book are cut off a bit but not really a big problem.

This book should be required reading for anyone taking calculus. My only regret about this book is that I had not read it sooner, like during my first quarter of calculus. The fact is, I got more understanding in this subject in the first thirty pages than I received from all of my professors (with the exception of one engineering professor who offhandedly gave better insight about calculus and its uses in a mechanical engineering class.) It is a shame that those who teach calculus do not teach directly from this book's pages and if you are taking higher math it will be a mistake to not purchase this book.

The important thing to remember about this book is that it is calculus made easy - because it's easy calculus! It probably is not going to help you figure out problem # 64 in your 10 lb, 1000 page monster text. The other reviewers have noted that it does present basic concepts in an easy to understand format and it is useful for getting down those basics. But the problems tend to be the easy drill type found in the beginning of problem sets and there is a vast amount of material that is simply not covered. This book is probably more useful for the 'soft calculus' type of course. So if you really want to learn limits, the Fundamental Theorem, etc., go back and sweat the monster text.

I love this book, at least up to the bottom of page 23 (I just purchased the second edition from Amazon). There are two equations at the bottom of the page. Let's call them equation 1 and equation 2. Equation 2, the one at the bottom of the page, is supposed to be a restatement of equation 1. I cannot figure out how the author gets from 1 to 2. It seems to me that equation 2 should read [(x)e-2][(1+2dx/x)e-1].Can anyone help me with this? Thanks, Phil M.

I agree with the consensus rating of this book. The concepts are presented in a more straightforward manner than in most math texts. However, my copy which I ordered from Amazon is missing pages 164-172. I'm missing the meat of the chapter regarding trigonometric functions.

This is not the new version in a soft cover. This is the 2nd edition of the original text. I already have a softcover 3rd edition. The picture and some of the comments in this page are for the Martin rendition. The printing is poor. Very disappointed in amazon for misrepresenting this text.