A new month has begun, and my orbit has finally returned to a "point of opportunity" I have passed by more than once. This time I'm taking that trajectory and have started studying calculus for real. This means that I've put away my physics book for now and have opened my calculus primer. I mentioned this a year or so ago, but was more interested in getting some first-year physics done so I put it off.

My Friendly Mathematicians, if they still remember me, are wondering what took me so long. They encouraged me to start calculus back in 2004 but I was too nervous to do it. After all, just about everyone I've met who gave up math said that calculus was the reason. They said to me, "I was great in algebra and geometry, but when I took calculus, it was like hitting a wall and I couldn't get it at all." So the possibility exists that I, too, will hit the proverbial wall and find out that I can't learn calculus. However, in doing even the simplest of physics, I am told that I have already done some elementary calculus. So maybe I'll just climb up the wall and go over it.

Back in 2004 a Friendly Mathematician gave me his favorite introductory book on Calculus. This is WHAT IS CALCULUS ABOUT? by W. W. Sawyer. I looked into it before but found some of its very first graphs confusing. Now I have moved past those graphs and am going on to the next chapter. This book is just a simple introduction, as the author says in his preface, but it does have problem sets to do and will lead into a more formal study later on. Another Friendly Mathematician gave me his textbooks from old courses he had taught, including one massive tome (and its answer book companion) which weighs many kilograms. I expect to heft that set and open it for business later on this year. For now, I have not only Sawyer but another introductory text by Eli S. Pine, optimistically called HOW TO ENJOY CALCULUS. I'll be working with both these books as 2006 progresses.

I am studying calculus not just because it is a worthy challenge but because I need it to proceed any further in physics. Calculus is the next step on the journey I began back in 2000 when I beheld the particle accelerator at Fermilab. Some folks, at my age, get fast cars to jazz up their lives. I don't have a fast car, but I will get the mathematics that describes its velocity and movement.

Posted at 3:08 am | link