halcyonb's review against another edition

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4.0

The history of calculus, guided by following its defining principle: the infinity principle, from the ancient Greeks to today.

The infinity principle states a hard problem can be tackled by splitting it into infinitely small parts, solving those parts and them summing them back together.

Archimedes used the IP is on shapes, Galileo on motion and Newton turned it into calculus for predicting anything todo with change.

This book is full of practical examples and historical stories that shows calculus' impact on science and the world.

yash_verma's review against another edition

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5.0

The only history book that I liked !! Though it's not entirely history of calculus, it is more like a story that starts with how the foundation of calculus was laid in 16th century to how different parts of calculus (differential and integral) developed to current applications.
A must read for all those who wants to know the real life applications of calculus which by the way are in many fields and all of them are exquisite.

giovannic's review against another edition

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5.0

great book!!

vincentngo's review against another edition

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5.0

What an intriguing book! Absolutely a must-read for a student interested in applied Calculus and Mathematics in general.

Not only the book walk you through the technology developments, but also the rich history and big ideas around Calculus. Calculus lore. I also love the great stories of the big figures, my favorites are the stories of Fermat, Descartes, Katherine Johnson, and especially Sophie Germain.

Unlike my initial thought, this book is not a Calculus textbook. I also believe that one must have certain Calculus background to full enjoy the book (great motivation to study math!).

flagstaff's review against another edition

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5.0

Outstanding. Got this from the public library but just might get a personal copy as it will take several readings to take it all in. In school took the courses on the how to do it, this book explained the why of it.

quintus's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

b_jj's review against another edition

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informative slow-paced

4.75

evgeorge's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

An interesting history of calculus, the impacts the developments have had on culture, technology  and religion from Ancient Greece to the future of physics and technology.

thisisstephenbetts's review against another edition

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4.0

Really enjoyed this review of the history of calculus. Very approachable and gave a really interesting perspective on the history of "calculus" right back to the geometry of the Greeks.

reneeyik's review against another edition

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4.0

If you had told 16 year old me that I would be voluntarily reading a book about calculus in the future, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

I wish that I had read this book or had the concepts/application of calculus be summarized so succinctly when I was learning it in high school. I always struggled with understanding the application of calculus and visualizing it (I could calculate the numbers, but I didn't know why I was doing it), but this book really broke it down for me.