Simplifying and Refactoring Introductory Calculus

(arxiv.org)

40 points | by E-Reverance 3 hours ago

7 comments

  • cool_dude85 9 minutes ago
    Got to the place where he says "As you can see, this is identical to the d/dx() operation except that the result is not divided by dx."

    What does it mean with his d() operator to "divide by dx"? All of a sudden it seems like he has changed dy/dx from unfortunate notation that sort of looks like a division into something that actually is dividing two meaningful things, dy and dx? And so what the hell are dy and dx?

  • conorbergin 10 minutes ago
    This guy has an interesting publication history, programming books and what looks like evolutionary biology from a creationist perspective.
  • bee_rider 24 minutes ago
    Looks like this came out nearly 8 years ago, so… how’d it work out? Given the way job titles work these days I guess we could have some Senior Engineers here who learned calculus from this paper…
  • E-Reverance 31 minutes ago
    where I heard of this from : https://youtu.be/4ZB2PNUYR1Y
  • cyberax 7 minutes ago
    Eh. I think that the standard calculus approach is mostly fine, but just needs tweaking.

    The only major change that I'd like to make is the removal of sequences and all the associated theorems from the introductory calculus. Instead, start with limits of functions and the notion of continuity.

    It immediately leads to the notion of the derivative. And after that, it's just a lot of building blocks.

  • thisisauserid 35 minutes ago
    [flagged]