Calculus Made Easy

“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.””

— Silvanus P. Thompson

“What one fool can do, another can.””

— Silvanus P. Thompson

“Most mathematics deals with static objects such as circles and triangles and numbers. But the great universe "out there," not made by us, is in a constant state of what Newton called flux. At every microsecond it changes magically into something different. Calculus is the mathematics of change.””

— Silvanus P. Thompson

“If  and  be the lengths of a rod of iron at the temperatures ​C. and ​C. respectively, then . Find the change of length of the rod per degree centigrade.””

— Silvanus P. Thompson

“This gives us our instructions as to how to differentiate a quotient of two functions. Multiply the divisor function by the derivative of the dividend function; then multiply the dividend function by the derivative of the divisor function; and subtract. Lastly divide by the square of the divisor function. This is called the Quotient Rule.  Example 6.3. Going back to our example , write ​ and ​ Then  ​ (Answer) The working out of quotients is often tedious, but there is nothing difficult about it.””

— Silvanus P. Thompson

“It is a fortunate and astonishing fact that the fundamental laws of our fantastic fidgety universe are based on relatively simple equations. If it were otherwise, we surely would know less than we know now about how our universe behaves, and Newton and Leibniz would probably never have invented (or discovered?) calculus.””

— Silvanus P. Thompson