Calculus Fundamentals Explained

Samuel Horelick is mathematics professor and higher education consultant. He has graduated from three Universities with four degrees in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Mathematical Education. This textbook is a product of two decades of teaching Calculus. In that time I have taught students of every imaginable cultural, social, and educational background, from the affluent communities in South Florida to the inner city New York, not to mention various other colleges and innumerable hours of private tutoring. And regardless of student's background and the level of preparation, most students seem to have one deeply ingrained misconception about Calculus: "Calculus is something so difficult and 'far out' that most people can not really do it at all." This misconception is so blatantly false, but so widely held, that it is probably the school system itself that propagates this ridiculous, silly notion. One serious difficulty in learning Calculus today is a lack of simple and clear textbooks. There are dozens of huge, expensive textbooks that are so needlessly complicated as to be practically incomprehensible. It seems that every author of a Calculus textbook believes that every student is a born mathematician that wants to become a math professor. They forget that a mark of a good teacher is the ability to make complicated things seem easy and simple. A good textbook must explain and teach its subject matter, helping the student to learn and say: "That's all? That's easy!"