Monday, December 20, 2021

Calculus Made Easy and Memorable

I made a website to help people learn calculus. I have taken a 1910 book Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson that has already been digitized and put on the web in a nice format at https://calculusmadeeasy.org/. This was created by nadvornix and other volunteers. This edition has added some memorisation reminders to the text.

The book is famous for being accessible to teenagers. Some of the text has dated in the century since. Martin Gardner created a new edition in the 1980s with some of the text deolded and some extra background chapters. Making similar updates might improve this book some more.

Orbit is a tool that tests your knowledge of text you just read. And then retests you on a regular basis. This vastly increases the amount you remember for very little extra time or effort. Some of the evidence that timed repetition aids recall is given in this essay 

Calculus made Easy and Memorable is on the web at http://calculusmadememorable.org/ and the code is here

Why put a new more memorable calculus book online? ‘1 million students take a college-level Calculus 1 course in the United States, at an average cost of $2,500. And then 40% of them fail.’ That is 1 billion loss a year in one country from failing one course. Anything that helps reduce that rate could be a boon.







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