Calculus: Early Transcendental Functions

by Robert T. Smith, Roland B. Minton

Smith/ Mathematically Precise. Student-Friendly. Superior Technology. Students who have used Smith/Minton's Calculus say it was easier to read than any other math book they've used. That testimony underscores the success of the authors’ approach, which combines the best elements of reform with the most reliable aspects of mainstream calculus teaching, resulting in a motivating, challenging book. Smith/Minton also provide exceptional, reality-based applications that appeal to students’ interests and demonstrate the elegance of math in the world around us. New features • A new organization placing all transcendental functions early in the book and consolidating the introduction to L'Hôpital's Rule in a single section. • More concisely written explanations in every chapter. • Many new exercises (for a total of 7,000 throughout the book) that require additional rigor not found in the 2nd Edition. • New exploratory exercises in every section that challenge students to synthesize key concepts to solve intriguing projects. • New commentaries (“Beyond Formulas”) that encourage students to think mathematically beyond the procedures they learn. • New counterpoints to the historical notes, “Today in Mathematics,” that stress the contemporary dynamism of mathematical research and applications, connecting past contributions to the present. • An enhanced discussion of differential equations and additional applications of vector calculus.

Genres: School, Mathematics, Reference, Engineering, Science

1376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 23, 2006

About the author

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Reviews

[Kenny Kidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bahaha ok so

In my math minor we covered, like, 10-11 of the 15 chapters in this Pretty Damn Thorough textbook, and so a lil personal goal I gave myself post-graduation was to work through the remaining four chapters/review the content I felt fuzzy on and do a fair amount of the exercises to ~familiarize myself with and solidify~ the concepts present, and I don’t regret it aaaaaat all 😤

I’ll be honest, I find higher-level math Quite Thrilling and Elegant and Beautiful in the same way that solving a complicated puzzle, a well-realized twist in a narrative, or the sensation of something working Exactly Right evokes, and I kinda had a blast with this textbook 😅 Really thorough, explains the concepts well enough in the chapters that doing the exercises is (normally) easy enough if you review the content, and the content itself is just SO fun to me, frankly 🤷‍♂️

The last couple chapters (Vector Calculus and Second-Order Differential Equations) left me sweating with frustration and thinking I may need to take an Actual Course to get better at, like, calculating curvature and whatnot, but damn was it fun! Go math! Without calculus the modern world could never exist! And it’s fun and challenging and elegant! Hell yeah!

Think I’ll look through/review my Linear Algebra textbook next or try my hand at a Differential Equations textbook, we’ll see 🤷‍♂️