» Calculus: Single Variable

Calculus: Single Variable Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Only useful if you've had Calculus before
Comment: I bought this book for my Calculus I class this semester - and I hate it! The author doesn't break concepts apart; the assumption inherent in that is the reader has had Calculus before. Also, there's a lot of verbiage in place of examples, which makes it confusing to read.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: How I Learned Calculus
Comment: This calculus textbook provides challenging sample problems and clear proofs for calculus students. It highlights the main points well, surrounding each must-know point with an extremely helpful blue box (actually you could probably learn calculus by just reading the blue boxes). Exercises range from easy to very challenging and from random to practical. While most of the problems can be done by hand, a graphing calculator is necessary to get the most out of this book. For those taking AP Calculus, this book covers both AB and BC.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Comment: I've taught out of this book for several years. Students learn to understand the concepts through some very useful and interesting problems. Extremely well-written.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: These other ratings are too low
Comment: I should start out by saying that I haven't seen this newest edition, but if it's similar to the older ones which also got unfair reviews, I can safely say that this book deserves at least a 3. It is certainly not a one star book, and I suspect that those reviewers are just taking their frustrations out on the easiest target (because as we all know, doing poorly in calculus is NEVER the student's fault).

I don't think this is the book to use if you're a math major, but other than that it's good. I taught myself calculus with an older edition when I was in 11th grade and I felt that I had an intuitive understanding of the subject even if I couldn't do a proof. I think that intuitive understanding should be the goal of a calculus book that isn't necessarily designed for math majors (this book seems more suited for biology majors or something similar).

Probably my biggest complaint is that the book, like so many others, isn't clear about what is an acceptable proof and what is just a convincing(hopefully) argument. Students may believe that such arguments are valid proofs, and I think the authors should make it clear what the case may be. This is the main reason I wouldn't recommend the book to math majors, but just about anyone else should gain a good understanding of calculus from this book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Opaque; provides little context; all but useless to the freshman
Comment: Little explanation or background is provided to orient the student; the book assumes the reader has been using trigonometry and algebra on a daily basis for the better part of adulthood. An example of this is the section on rates and related rates (4.6). There are two paragraphs given in the way of explanation:

"Derivatives represent rates of change. In this section, we see how to calculate rates in a variety of situations."

And...

"In Example 1, the radius of the snowball decreased at a constant rate. A more realistic scenario is for the radius to decrease at different rates at different times. Then, we may not be able to write a formula for V as a function of t. However, we may still be able to calculate dV/dt, as in the following example."

No mention of how the process of working related rates problems is similar to implicit differentiation. No step-by-step outline of a general way to go about working this category of problem. Just examples outside of any framework.

Better for a refresher in Calculus for graduate students than a freshman-level course. I used Stewart's "Calculus: Concepts and Contexts" to learn how to do the assigned work from this text.

Don't think the solutions manual will help--only a subset of the odd problems in the text are described and the explanations are often wanting.

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