Best book/software for Calculus?

[Gecko]

What do you guys think is the most complete and clear calculus book? also, is there any good software for learning calculus? thanks.

 

[singleton]

What is your background? Have you had any introduction to calculus already?

 

[Gecko]

i know limits and derivatives (really basic though)

 

[ReyChiquito]

I bassically used two books during calc courses. Apostol's and Courant's. Both are very formal and difficult. You may want to have a teacher and more simpler books to work your way trough this two. What i mean is that these are not books for engenieers (no ofence). They have lots of mathematical rigor in them.

I personally think these two are the best Calc books ever made, specially Courant's.

Some people will recommend Spivak's book, which is a good book and is also hard for newbies (lots of debate here between which one is the best, Spivak's, Courant's or Apostol's, different "schools" i guess), and some others will recommend Stewart's (did i spell this right?), which i personally find rather basic if you want to become a mathematitian, but good if you want to learn how to use calculus (if you are tending more to an applied science).

 

[Gecko]

my aim is to learn calculus to use for physics, so I am guessing the last one, Stewart's would be the best?

btw, thanks for the help.

 

[broegger]

I can only recommend Stewarts book - "Calculus - concepts and contexts" I think it's called. Well-written, easy to read and a lot of examples and great illustrations.

I had this book during Calculus I + II and Vector Calculus and was very pleased with it.

 

[Gecko]

well, i looked at some reviews on the books that you guys recommended and almost everyone says that they are very hard and that stewarts book gives way to hard of problems compared to the examples he uses. I am going to be teaching myself atm so i was wondering if there was one that explained easier? thanks. also, right now, i got a rather old book (published in 1968) called The Calculus with Analytic Geometry and the author is Louis Leithold. I've gone through it but it seems to make rather big jumps over "this rule to this example" and i don't think i would know anything that he was talking about if i had not had a basic background in limits and derivatives. anyone had this book?

also, up to this point I've been using a book called Calculus for the Managerial, Life, and Social Sciences by S.T. Tan. It seems to explain the points pretty clearly but it bothers me that it focus's on those certain sciences and might skip over points that i would need or use for physics. does anyone know of a good calculus book that is meant or easily incorporated into physics?

thanks again guys.

 

[JasonRox]

I would definitely go with Spivak's text.

Stewart is great and all, but Spivak is better because he doesn't waste time on pointless crap. He tells you a little bit, and explains some with an example or two. After that, it's pretty much your job to do the rest.

I have both texts and have read 5 chapters or more in both texts.

If you just want to do Physics, go with Stewart. If you are not sure about Physics or Math, then go with Spivak because if you don't, you'll never know what math really is.

 

[broegger]

Well, I'm going to have to disagree with JasonRox last comment.

Furthermore it is NOT true that the exercises in Stewart are too difficult - whoever wrote this is an idiot. There is 25-50 exercises in the end of every chapter - 90-95% of these requires only convergent thinking. The last 3-5 may require some basic divergent thinking.

 

[ReyChiquito]

plus, you might want to read some physics books.

 

[misogynisticfeminist]

If you're new at calculus, calculus made easy by silvanus p. thompson and martin Gardner would help alot. Even though its not as in depth as other books, it is written in clear and interesting prose and even Feynman learned calculus using this book ! I've found myself easily learning certain concepts such as partial differentials and integration by parts just by glancing at the chapters.

The only downfall i can see is that it has a lack of proofs. Especially in the introduction to differentiation. There was no mention of limits. Which in my opinion is good. I myself got totally phased out when i saw the proof of differentiation in my school math textbook. So, this book makes it much simpler.

 

[JasonRox]

Well, I'm going to have to disagree with JasonRox last comment.

Furthermore it is NOT true that the exercises in Stewart are too difficult - whoever wrote this is an idiot. There is 25-50 exercises in the end of every chapter - 90-95% of these requires only convergent thinking. The last 3-5 may require some basic divergent thinking.

I did not say that in the previous post, but I did say it before. The problem was that I was trying to breeze through it.

Now, I do all the questions and basically if you do one after the other its not bad at all.

I like it better because questions in other texts are dirt easy that there is no point wasting your time on them.

 

[mattmns]

I had Stewarts Calculus : Concepts and Contexts(2nd edition) for ap calc ab and I thought the book was pretty good

 

[JasonRox]

I had Stewarts Calculus : Concepts and Contexts(2nd edition) for ap calc ab and I thought the book was pretty good

Depends on what you want to learn.