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Introduction To Calculus

Calculus began as a study of speed and motion in the early 1600s. It has since become indispensable to fields like physics, engineering, and mathematics. While initially seen as difficult, calculus has been taught more simply as an introduction to more advanced concepts. There is debate around how much calculus beginners should be exposed to warnings about more complex ideas they have not yet learned. The best approach is to teach concepts one at a time, introducing complexity only as students' understanding progresses, so as not to confuse or discourage them early on.

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122 views2 pages

Introduction To Calculus

Calculus began as a study of speed and motion in the early 1600s. It has since become indispensable to fields like physics, engineering, and mathematics. While initially seen as difficult, calculus has been taught more simply as an introduction to more advanced concepts. There is debate around how much calculus beginners should be exposed to warnings about more complex ideas they have not yet learned. The best approach is to teach concepts one at a time, introducing complexity only as students' understanding progresses, so as not to confuse or discourage them early on.

Uploaded by

kapil
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Introduction to Calculus

Calculus begins with an apparently simple and harmless question,"What is speed and
how can we calculate it?"
This question arose very naturally round about the year
1600 A.D., when all kinds of moving objects-from
planets to pendulums- were being studied.
Men were then just starting to study the
material world intensively. From that study
the modern world has developed, with the
knowledge of stars and atoms, of machines
and genes, that we have today, for good and
for ill. One might have expected the study o f
speed to have very limited applications-to
machinery, to falling objects, to the movements
of the heavenly bodies. But it has not been so.
Practically every development in science and
mathematics,from 1600 to 1900 A.D., was connected with calculus. From this single root,in
a most unexpected way, knowledge grew out in all directions.You find calculus applied to
the theory of gravitation, heat, light, sound, electricity, magnetism; to the flow of water and
the design of airplanes. Calculus enables Maxwell to predict radio twenty years before any
physicist can demonstrate radio experimentally; calculus still plays a vital role in Einstein's
theory of 1916 and in the new atomic theories of the nineteen twenties. Apart from these,
and many other applications in science, calculus stimulates the appearance of interesting
new branches of pure mathematics. In the present century, a few branches of mathematics
have developed that do not use calculus. Yet even these are mixed up with subjects related
to calculus. Someone studying these branches without a background of calculus would be at
a terrible disadvantage; he would meet allusions to calculus; there would be results
suggested by theorems in calculus. No person intending to study mathematics seriously
could possibly leave calculus out.Calculus, then, is an indispensable topic, both for the pure
and applied mathematician. And calculus grows from a quite simple idea,the idea of speed.

In the past, people often thought of calculus


as an extremely difficult subject. Then,
particularly in England, teachers began to
realize that many things could be done by
calculus in a way that was much simpler and
more interesting than anything in algebra. In
English high schools a student may have two
or even three years of calculus. But then
some mathematicians say that this is not
good; that calculus is really more
complicated than it appears, and that it
should only be taught by a very well
qualified mathematician. Where does the
truth lie in all these conflicting views?A
comparison may be helpful. A lady lives in a
quiet village, and every Sunday she drives herself to church. You ask her if it is easy to
drive a car. "Oh, yes," she says, "I have no mechanical aptitude, and I find it quite simple."
She might find it less simple if she had to drive in the middle of New York, or take a heavy
truck across the Rockies. But there is no denying the fact; she can drive a car. And, if she
ever did have to drive in heavy traffic, her experience of handling a car would be of some
use to her. She would not be so helpless as someone who had never driven at all.The
situation in calculus is somewhat similar. Elementary calculus is like elementary car driving,
not difficult to learn and it enables you to do many things you could never manage
otherwise. But if you wish to push calculus as far as it will go, you will run into things that
are more complicated.

How should calculus be taught then? Should we bother the beginner with warnings that only
become important in more advanced work?If we do so, the beginner will be confused
because he will not see any need for these warnings. If we do not, we shall be denounced
by mathematicians for deceiving the young.

I believe the correct approach is to do one thing at a


time. When you take a student into a quiet road to drive
a car for the first time, he has plenty to do in learning
which is the brake and which the accelerator, how to
steer, and how to park. You do not discuss with him how
to deal with heavy traffic which is not there, nor what he
would do if it were winter and the road were covered
with ice. But you might very well warn him that such
conditions exist, so that he does not over estimate what
he knows.

Mathematics also is an exploration. As we push out


further, we meet new and unexpected situations and we
have to revise our ideas. Rules we have used, theorems
we have proved turn out to have unforeseen
weaknesses. If I were asked to write on a sheet of paper
all the statements that I was absolutely sure of,
statements that would be true at every time and place, I
should leave the paper blank.Source: About Calculus by
Saqwyer, Calculus Applications by B.N.Panth, Calculus
Course by S.Chari (my teacher)

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