Customer Reviews

Introductory Analysis: A Deeper View of Calculus

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There are many ways to teach calculus. Typically, for maths majors, a rigorous epsilon-delta approach has been favoured. So we get the classic texts by Spivak, Apostol and Marsden, for example. But a problem is that this approach often turns off many students who need a firm understanding of calculus and classical analysis. They may not be maths majors. Instead, they could be majoring in engineering or the physical sciences. So Bagby offers them a more informal approach.

He does not deprecate rigour. But by presenting his narrative in a casual way, he gains the flexibility in recasting important concepts of proofs in a way understandable to more readers.

Even maths majors may want to consider having his text, as a backup to their more formal books. Because sometimes the arguments given in the latter's proofs can be very difficult to understand and generalise.