The Bottom Line
Calculus often spells out fear for the math student. Fear often stems from not having the confidence in yourself to succeed or to understand the concept. Amdahl and Loats open the doors to understanding the main concepts in Calculus. Instead of trying to memorize procedures, you'll come away with a much better understanding of functions, tangents, limits, rules which are the Big Ideas behind Calculus. Their guide is a support resource, it does not replace your text and it geared toward the student about to take Calculus or the student who has started taking the subject but the confusion reigns!
Pros
- A Strong Focus on the 'Big Idea's in Calculus
- Simple Easy to Follow Instructions
- If You Want to 'Make Sense' of the Main Concepts in Calculus - This is the Book!
- Written for the Beginner Calculus Student or those who 'Just Don't Get It'.
- An Easy Read, Easy to Follow Guide to Augment Your First Course Text in Caculus
Cons
- No Practice Problems with Solutions
- Not A Step by Step 'How To' Resource
- For the Beginner Calculus Student
Description
- Considering taking Calculus? Have some trepidation? This guide will certainly help you through that first year.
- The 'Big Ideas' (main concepts) are flushed out so that the reader can really make sense of what's going on in the math.
- An easy to follow guide that all users will be able to make sense of. A great reference to fall back upon when needed.
- A great introduction to Calculus. Even if you're not certain that you'll be taking Calculus.
- This book is written for those that struggle and need some confidence boosting by understanding the math behind the concepts.
- As a teacher, I thorougly enjoyed the additional explanations given - we know that students don't all learn the same way.
- Very authentic, analogies are plentiful to help readers make sense of the very nature of 'change in relationship' - Calculus.
- Key calculus concepts are addressed in a very understandable nature - I doubt this resource will confuse you.
- Takes the stage fright out of the pencil performance. Great explanations of concepts and that calculus jargon.
Guide Review - Self Help Calculus Guide: Calculus for Cats
Some time ago, I read Algebra Unplugged (another resource written by Amdahl and Loats)and was initially a skeptic regarding the approach used until I tried it with my own students. Students are notorius for struggling with positive and negative integers while working with the 4 operations. They tend to memorize the rules (a negative times a negative = a positive, a positive divided by a negative = a negative etc.)and rarely understand why they work and why we use the procedures that we do. So I tried the 'weight club' approach discussed early in the book. Needless to say, I had immediate success with my students. I read the rest of the book and was very pleased with the methods, descriptions and instructions given to succeed in Algebra.
Well, Amdahl and Loats have done it again, this time with Calculus. They successfully take a subject that conjures up fear for many students and make it 'doable'. This book is not your typical, read about the concept, see the example and then work through 10 similar problems and check your solutions. No, quite contrary! This book helps you to make sense of the big ideas in Calculus. It is an introductory book and an extremely useful one.
