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Calculus for Cats
Calculus for Cats describes the processes, vocabulary and strategies of calculus for people who like to learn the concepts of a subject before they start trying to operate it. In an irreverent tone, it explains what calculus is, why it's important, what the procedures are and when to use them. Many people learn subjects like calculus by repeating the procedures but sometimes feel like they don't really understand what's going on. This book answers their questions. Over the last decade of the book's existence, the most common comment it's received is, "Wow! So that's how it works! I wish I had this book back when i took the course." Obviously, it's even more valuable to students before they take the course. It contains no exercises; it won't replace a standard text or teacher. What it does is provide a second explanation of what's going on that many people find useful, and everyone agrees is much different from the traditional approaches.
182 pages, Paperback
First published September 7, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 18, 2015
2015-02-10
"Algebra is a set of tools to _solve_ problems. Calculus is a set of tools to _create_ problems."
This book is meant to be a sort of lightweight textbook, aimed at folks more in tune with the arts and humanities, to augment an existing calculus textbook. It talks more about the underlying concepts and meanings versus the route symbol manipulation of calculus. I picked it up because it's been a decade or two since I studied calculus, and although I do still remember a lot of the symbol manipulation tricks, I only remember the fuzzy basics of the concepts behind them. Because I'm approaching this as someone who already knows calculus, my views may be skewed.
First off, this isn't really a textbook. Textbooks offer, at the very least, concrete examples and almost always have exercises. This has none, though it's not shy in apologizing.
Secondly, the layout and graphics feel a little bit dated. I believe that it could really benefit from more graphs. It textually describes the relationship between a function and its derivative. Having experienced them before, I could easily follow. I worry that there are no graphs to more visually demonstrate a function alongside its derivative. I feel that a simple pair of graphs would have benefited the differential calculus section immensely: the correlation of minima and maxima to the derivative crossing the axis, and so on.
Third, the majority of the book was differential calculus — roughly the first three-quarters. The remaining quarter quickly blows through integral calculus. It doesn't spend near-enough time on the concepts and examples. It almost feels tacked on, compared to the rest of the book.
Stylistically, it is a fun read, but technically it left me wanting for more detail, more examples, and exercises to verify that I really did follow what was going on.
"Algebra is a set of tools to _solve_ problems. Calculus is a set of tools to _create_ problems."
This book is meant to be a sort of lightweight textbook, aimed at folks more in tune with the arts and humanities, to augment an existing calculus textbook. It talks more about the underlying concepts and meanings versus the route symbol manipulation of calculus. I picked it up because it's been a decade or two since I studied calculus, and although I do still remember a lot of the symbol manipulation tricks, I only remember the fuzzy basics of the concepts behind them. Because I'm approaching this as someone who already knows calculus, my views may be skewed.
First off, this isn't really a textbook. Textbooks offer, at the very least, concrete examples and almost always have exercises. This has none, though it's not shy in apologizing.
Secondly, the layout and graphics feel a little bit dated. I believe that it could really benefit from more graphs. It textually describes the relationship between a function and its derivative. Having experienced them before, I could easily follow. I worry that there are no graphs to more visually demonstrate a function alongside its derivative. I feel that a simple pair of graphs would have benefited the differential calculus section immensely: the correlation of minima and maxima to the derivative crossing the axis, and so on.
Third, the majority of the book was differential calculus — roughly the first three-quarters. The remaining quarter quickly blows through integral calculus. It doesn't spend near-enough time on the concepts and examples. It almost feels tacked on, compared to the rest of the book.
Stylistically, it is a fun read, but technically it left me wanting for more detail, more examples, and exercises to verify that I really did follow what was going on.
August 5, 2020
I think I read about this book somewhere on reddit and eventually ended up reading it right after seeing a presentation on "Video Games and the Future Of Education" by Jonathan Blow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWFSc... which also talks about how different mediums can be used for educational purposes.
I find myself many times having to explain concepts and present various technical ideas at work and I am always thinking about how to make my ideas accessible and easy to understand. By reading this book I wanted to see another example of "non-traditional" presentation of a technical subject.
I constantly kept thinking about the talk I linked to earlier and I saw in this book a hint of the same idea presented there: by offering a universe / world / medium where what you're trying to present is relatable or interactable then the learner will develop intuition and understanding for the subject much faster than traditional teaching methods would provide.
A "cat" universe is offered in this book, where cats perform various silly things which are then coupled with calculus concepts. The main problem with this is that the cat universe is only used as a pretext, is many times apologetic about being a cat universe and also requires some immagination effort and suspension of disbelief from the reader. Meanwhile the Zahctronics games offer a much more "palpable" environment which is just as fake as the cat universe but by removing the burden of imagination and just throwing you in it allows you to focus on what it's trying to say and not wasting time imagining cats. I am not saying imagination is a bad thing but in this particular context I feel that brain power should be used for the actual concepts you're trying to understand.
I think that the book would make a great Zahctronics game (with cats), there were many sections in it where I was thinking that this would be fun to play with in an interactive fashion (for example, the projection of the car's lights on walls in front and behind of the car to explain the slope concept).
I had an old calculus professor tell us that "intuition should be entirely ignored when reasoning about math" and I never really believed that to be a good thing. I agree that hard and rigorous proofs are mandatory for a deeper and complete understanding of things but discovering those things to begin with and knowing when and how they should be used and connecting them with seemingly unrelated concepts has our intuition involved to an extent that it would be a pity to ignore it. A mix of both feels more natural to me, depending on where in the learning process one is.
- The book felt inconsistent at times, it dropped the universe entirely and used real-world examples for things which added a bit of context-switch burden
- I felt that the quality of the explanations dropped of towards the end, starting with "e"
- A "tool" used quite often in explanations is also used in the book: mnemonics. This is an interesting one to reason about.
I find myself many times having to explain concepts and present various technical ideas at work and I am always thinking about how to make my ideas accessible and easy to understand. By reading this book I wanted to see another example of "non-traditional" presentation of a technical subject.
I constantly kept thinking about the talk I linked to earlier and I saw in this book a hint of the same idea presented there: by offering a universe / world / medium where what you're trying to present is relatable or interactable then the learner will develop intuition and understanding for the subject much faster than traditional teaching methods would provide.
A "cat" universe is offered in this book, where cats perform various silly things which are then coupled with calculus concepts. The main problem with this is that the cat universe is only used as a pretext, is many times apologetic about being a cat universe and also requires some immagination effort and suspension of disbelief from the reader. Meanwhile the Zahctronics games offer a much more "palpable" environment which is just as fake as the cat universe but by removing the burden of imagination and just throwing you in it allows you to focus on what it's trying to say and not wasting time imagining cats. I am not saying imagination is a bad thing but in this particular context I feel that brain power should be used for the actual concepts you're trying to understand.
I think that the book would make a great Zahctronics game (with cats), there were many sections in it where I was thinking that this would be fun to play with in an interactive fashion (for example, the projection of the car's lights on walls in front and behind of the car to explain the slope concept).
I had an old calculus professor tell us that "intuition should be entirely ignored when reasoning about math" and I never really believed that to be a good thing. I agree that hard and rigorous proofs are mandatory for a deeper and complete understanding of things but discovering those things to begin with and knowing when and how they should be used and connecting them with seemingly unrelated concepts has our intuition involved to an extent that it would be a pity to ignore it. A mix of both feels more natural to me, depending on where in the learning process one is.
- The book felt inconsistent at times, it dropped the universe entirely and used real-world examples for things which added a bit of context-switch burden
- I felt that the quality of the explanations dropped of towards the end, starting with "e"
- A "tool" used quite often in explanations is also used in the book: mnemonics. This is an interesting one to reason about.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 14, 2020
This book wasn't really for me. I wouldn't discourage someone from giving it a shot if they're struggling with calculus, but abstracting so far away from the math was harder for me to grasp than the actual mathematical definitions.
I wanted to give this a try because in her book, A Mind for Numbers, Barbara Oakley emphasizes the power of visuals in deep understanding, and I've found that it helps. But damn, it can take some effort if you're not used to thinking in freeform associations. I guess what I found in reading this is that someone else's visuals don't really do it for me, so back to the old grindstone, I suppose.
I wanted to give this a try because in her book, A Mind for Numbers, Barbara Oakley emphasizes the power of visuals in deep understanding, and I've found that it helps. But damn, it can take some effort if you're not used to thinking in freeform associations. I guess what I found in reading this is that someone else's visuals don't really do it for me, so back to the old grindstone, I suppose.
June 27, 2017
Calculus without stress for everybody
I'd like to translate this book in French! A very up-to-date scholling method giving a friendly scope of this difficult matter.
I'd like to translate this book in French! A very up-to-date scholling method giving a friendly scope of this difficult matter.
March 20, 2015
I was hoping for a high-level level view of calculus - the kind of thing that ties together concepts that might get lost in the details of the textbook, but this book really felt disorganized. It had many errors (not including the scanning-related errors of my Kindle version), and I felt many explanations were overly terse. My "Required Calculus Textbook" ended up shedding more light on Calculus for Cat than Calculus for Cats shed on any of the concepts in my textbook.
Also, the cat concept was inconsistent, and sometimes pretty forced.
Also, the cat concept was inconsistent, and sometimes pretty forced.
January 14, 2015
So cats are behind my inability to learn calculus! In praise of this book, I can only say that while reading it, I had the illusion that I actually could understand calculus. Pity it didn't last. Maybe if I read it again...because, believe it or not, it is entertaining as well as enlightening.
October 13, 2014
A math book for people who like words and cats. This book is great fun and imaginative. This book also teaches you the basic concepts behind calculus. No really, it does this will being hilarious!
June 2, 2013
For a math book, this was awesome. It got me to laugh, and understand calculus better.
August 4, 2015
Started out interesting, but eventually lost me. Mathematics is not my forte, but I was hoping that some of the mystery would clear away, and perhaps I could appreciate it more.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews