Customer Reviews

A Century of Calculus: Part II 1969-1991 (The Raymond W Brink Selected Mathematical Papers)

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

 

 

In many ways, as calculus goes, so goes the collegiate mathematics major, as the calculus classes are the initial courses in the math major. And as the math major goes, so goes the training of the next generation of math professionals, which is the driving force of so much of the scientific and technical progress. For this reason teachers of calculus must always be on the lookout for new and interesting items to incorporate into their instructional scheme.
This collection of 150 papers that were originally published in "The American Mathematical Monthly", "Mathematics Magazine" and "The College Mathematics Journal" was selected from an original pool of over 500. The goal was breadth rather than depth in order to cover as broad a spectrum of topics as possible and they are partitioned into thirteen categories:

*) History
*) Pedagogy
*) Functions
*) Limits and continuity
*) Differentiation
*) Mean value theorem for derivatives, indeterminate forms
*) Taylor polynomials, Bernoulli polynomials and sums of the powers of integers
*) Maxima and minima
*) Integration
*) Numerical, graphical, and mechanical methods and approximations (including use of computers)
*) Infinite sequences and series
*) Special numbers
*) The light touch

The majority of the papers are less than three pages in length, so the particular point is often one that can easily be incorporated into a calculus class. In an odd source of terms, the topics can be described as the "unusual usual" in that it is an unusual twist on something ordinarily covered in the basic calculus sequence. If you are looking for interesting tidbits for your class, the books in the "A Century of Calculus" sequence are the first place you should look.