Literature bits, most from somewhere, some original.

January 6, 2011

Calculus Made Easy (2nd Edition prologue)

Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it
should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool
to learn how to master the same tricks.

Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult.
The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics--and they
are mostly clever fools--seldom take the trouble to show you how easy
the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to
impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the
most difficult way.

Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach
myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the
parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will
follow. What one fool can do, another can.

0 comments: