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A Tour of the Calculus

(Vintage)

By David Berlinski

(2)

| Paperback | 9780679747888

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Book Description

Were it not for the calculus, mathematicians would have no way to describe the acceleration of a motorcycle or the effect of gravity on thrown balls and distant planets, or to prove that a man could cross a room and eventually touch the opposite wall. Just how calculus makes these things possible anContinue

1 Review

1 person find this helpful

What a disappointment

I picked up this book in hope to get some new ideas to present a Calculus course for liberal art students, which are often students that do not appreciate mathematics. Perhaps a humanities student would like this book more than I did. Calculus is a wonderful subject, a milestone of human thought, an ... (continue)

I picked up this book in hope to get some new ideas to present a Calculus course for liberal art students, which are often students that do not appreciate mathematics. Perhaps a humanities student would like this book more than I did. Calculus is a wonderful subject, a milestone of human thought, and clearly the author agrees with me here. However, I was bored stiff by the exceedingly flowery prose. Such a style is, in my opinion, a big hurdle to the understanding of the subject. For these reasons I would have assigned only one star to this book. In the end I decided to give two stars for two reasons: first, the subject matter is still well worthy the effort of reading the book, second, and more important, I realize that it might be just my professional habit as a mathematician to use only meaningful words, carefully selected to convey a precise meaning: no more no less, that makes me hate his writing style so much. Perhaps, however, liberal art students would find it more congenial and maybe even attractive. With this doubt I gave it two stars.

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Stefano said on Aug 26, 2008 | Add your feedback