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Calculus
Gilbert Strang's Calculus textbook is ideal both as a course companion and for self study. The author has a direct style. His book presents detailed and intensive explanations. Many diagrams and key examples are used to aid understanding, as well as the application of calculus to physics and engineering and economics. The text is well organized, and it covers single variable and multivariable calculus in depth. An instructor's manual and student guide are available online at
615 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Gilbert Strang
37 books177 followersWilliam Gilbert Strang (born November 27, 1934), usually known as simply Gilbert Strang or Gil Strang, is an American mathematician, with contributions to finite element theory, the calculus of variations, wavelet analysis and linear algebra. He has made many contributions to mathematics education, including publishing seven mathematics textbooks and one monograph. Strang is the MathWorks Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He teaches Introduction to Linear Algebra and Computational Science and Engineering and his lectures are freely available through MIT OpenCourseWare.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 4, 2013
This is one of the single most dangerous books you can give a young, high school student. If you want him to spend his youth reading about differential equations in his room while the other kids play basketball, his college days pouring over Abelian groups and Poisson distributions while others play beer pong and lip sync to 80s music, and his professional life among a community of people studying something so far removed from most people's lives that there are less than two dozen people with which he can actually communicate, then give him this book. Because he will fall in love with math, and it will be your fault.
December 29, 2012
This book is amazing. And I got it for free from the MIT website, where I found it while watching some videos trying to brush up on polar coordinates and hyperbolic integrals (Don't ask why... I am such a geek... =))
After I worked through my problem, I circled back and began reading the book. And I was amazed at the clarity of the text. It is officially the second best calculus textbook I've seen -- the best was a Dover book that I found in college by Morris Klein. Strang makes the concepts behind the calculus intuitively clear, and doesn't get bogged down in "proofs."
Which, after all, makes sense. Since Newton and Leibniz were trying to solve a physical problem -- the instantaneous velocity of an accelerating object -- when they developed the calculus.
I think every high school and college should use this text. Instead of the "new and improved" texts weighing in at 2000 pages and costing $250... But I digress...
After I worked through my problem, I circled back and began reading the book. And I was amazed at the clarity of the text. It is officially the second best calculus textbook I've seen -- the best was a Dover book that I found in college by Morris Klein. Strang makes the concepts behind the calculus intuitively clear, and doesn't get bogged down in "proofs."
Which, after all, makes sense. Since Newton and Leibniz were trying to solve a physical problem -- the instantaneous velocity of an accelerating object -- when they developed the calculus.
I think every high school and college should use this text. Instead of the "new and improved" texts weighing in at 2000 pages and costing $250... But I digress...
May 13, 2023
Firstly, to be clear my 2 stars is just by Goodreads official guideline, so it means "it was ok." I'd say it's a pretty good resource and maybe a mediocre textbook, since it doesn't score super high in clarity or mathematical directness.
Pros:
- Online videos and answer keys etc. available online. I didn't watch the videos but I imagine it would've been very helpful to go along with the book, especially for someone self-studying.
- Good intuitive-vibes-y explanations of a lot of stuff and connecting different ideas to each other (e.g. 2d and 3d stuff)
- Some nice visuals/illustrations
- Some very interesting, nice problems, lots of connections to applications, which I think make it nicer for someone who is interested in results over proofs, rigor, etc.
Cons:
- I think some things just need way more practice problems for someone new to get fluent with it, esp. simple integration problems
- Unfortunately it's not always clear where he's giving vibes-y explanations or off-topic "btw" thoughts and where he's giving important or rigorous material. Also he has a habit of dropping some conclusion and then a paragraph later going to explain it. I think that may work fine in a lecture style but my default when confused is to look earlier in the text, not later; this book kind of requires the latter though. This makes the reading confusing at times.
- Along similar lines, there really is a deluge of applications at the cost of direct mathematical simplicity. I think that would be helpful for some people who are already well-versed in the parts of physics, biology, and economics that require calculus, but I think he pours out masses of info about applications that's not really explained in the context, and that kind of distracted from the core of calculus for me. Again, I think hearing him talk about this if he were lecturing would be very interesting, but reading is a slightly different medium of communication, and it's harder to tell what needs to be fully comprehended and what's just for-your-future-ring-a-bell-ness.
- I think his section at the end on discrete mathematics focuses on something oddly specific in what I consider a pretty broad field. I mean, sure, it's not mainly what the book is about, and he does qualify that there are other topics...but ehh.
- A lot of problems imo are somewhat poorly worded and there are some simple mistakes in some examples in the text actually [and, if following along online, there are several mistakes in a number of solutions too]
Pros:
- Online videos and answer keys etc. available online. I didn't watch the videos but I imagine it would've been very helpful to go along with the book, especially for someone self-studying.
- Good intuitive-vibes-y explanations of a lot of stuff and connecting different ideas to each other (e.g. 2d and 3d stuff)
- Some nice visuals/illustrations
- Some very interesting, nice problems, lots of connections to applications, which I think make it nicer for someone who is interested in results over proofs, rigor, etc.
Cons:
- I think some things just need way more practice problems for someone new to get fluent with it, esp. simple integration problems
- Unfortunately it's not always clear where he's giving vibes-y explanations or off-topic "btw" thoughts and where he's giving important or rigorous material. Also he has a habit of dropping some conclusion and then a paragraph later going to explain it. I think that may work fine in a lecture style but my default when confused is to look earlier in the text, not later; this book kind of requires the latter though. This makes the reading confusing at times.
- Along similar lines, there really is a deluge of applications at the cost of direct mathematical simplicity. I think that would be helpful for some people who are already well-versed in the parts of physics, biology, and economics that require calculus, but I think he pours out masses of info about applications that's not really explained in the context, and that kind of distracted from the core of calculus for me. Again, I think hearing him talk about this if he were lecturing would be very interesting, but reading is a slightly different medium of communication, and it's harder to tell what needs to be fully comprehended and what's just for-your-future-ring-a-bell-ness.
- I think his section at the end on discrete mathematics focuses on something oddly specific in what I consider a pretty broad field. I mean, sure, it's not mainly what the book is about, and he does qualify that there are other topics...but ehh.
- A lot of problems imo are somewhat poorly worded and there are some simple mistakes in some examples in the text actually [and, if following along online, there are several mistakes in a number of solutions too]
November 20, 2016
Gilbert Strang is extremely competent and this is reflected in the content of this book. A caveat would be that at places I would say he is TOO competent, since some of the (seemingly) trivial steps and proofs were at a pace where I began to struggle. Fortunately, Khan Academy and Strang's own courses at MIT OCW stepped in and did what this book did not. The breadth of application and theory is also astonishing. The same with the number of exercises. This is good because Strang will make coherence of infinite series, integrals, vector spaces and so on and tie it all together. The bad thing is that this is A LOT to take in when you're just wondering how the hell to do this one specific exercise. Much of it felt 'extracurricular' to me. At MIT, it's probably not.
I read it as a PDF, downloaded from the MIT website. It was free and that is positive. But you get what you (do not) pay for, and the quality was so bad at places that I could not decipher what the text said or what the formulas were. Bear that in mind if you do the same. The book is also old - the examples could use a dust-off here and there. But nothing that will prevent you from learning a ton from reading this.
Would I recommend it? If the alternative is doing nothing, then absolutely. If you could spend the time on Khan Academy and MIT OCW instead, then do that. It will take less time and essentially do the same as this book. If you do the exercises! I also find Gilbert Strang a better lecturer than author.
A link to Gilbert's Highlights of Calculus here.
I read it as a PDF, downloaded from the MIT website. It was free and that is positive. But you get what you (do not) pay for, and the quality was so bad at places that I could not decipher what the text said or what the formulas were. Bear that in mind if you do the same. The book is also old - the examples could use a dust-off here and there. But nothing that will prevent you from learning a ton from reading this.
Would I recommend it? If the alternative is doing nothing, then absolutely. If you could spend the time on Khan Academy and MIT OCW instead, then do that. It will take less time and essentially do the same as this book. If you do the exercises! I also find Gilbert Strang a better lecturer than author.
A link to Gilbert's Highlights of Calculus here.
November 21, 2014
AB-SO-LUTE-LY NOT.
I wanted to love this book. Seriously. It's free -- it's easy to download -- there are supplementary materials. But I cannot imagine a worse book to learn calculus from: conversational to the point that it's ludicrous, convoluted problems, confusing text, and relying heavily on theory rather than practice. Maybe you can understand this if you have taken calculus before. I haven't.
We are using this book in my class this year and I have not found a single individual who thinks this book is clear and/or concise and/or worth the time it takes to read it or the paper it is printed on.
Please, for the love of God, ANYTHING except this Calculus book.
I wanted to love this book. Seriously. It's free -- it's easy to download -- there are supplementary materials. But I cannot imagine a worse book to learn calculus from: conversational to the point that it's ludicrous, convoluted problems, confusing text, and relying heavily on theory rather than practice. Maybe you can understand this if you have taken calculus before. I haven't.
We are using this book in my class this year and I have not found a single individual who thinks this book is clear and/or concise and/or worth the time it takes to read it or the paper it is printed on.
Please, for the love of God, ANYTHING except this Calculus book.
April 25, 2016
The Math book. Here you'll find everything you need to teach yourself the basics of calculus (single-multi), period. With this wonderful textbook I had been able to cover most of the materials of calculus in about ten days of organized work, with a strong background obviously.
You don't need so many tips in order to enjoy this masterpiece, just take your time and do as much exercises as you prefer!
You don't need so many tips in order to enjoy this masterpiece, just take your time and do as much exercises as you prefer!
March 21, 2015
Good for what it is -- aimed at developing the intuition of calculus rather than the analytical grit. Even so, I give it a 4 mainly because it's also free. On the other hand, Lang's treatment of calculus (only a skim) is at the same level, but is more focused on the mathematics, which I think would have served me better had I known about it before.
November 14, 2023
A great book, I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if it was difficult at times. Most of the chapters are nothing new, I’ve dabbled in most of single-variable calculus and multivariable calculus as well. I didn’t do all the problems, just did around a third of every exercise. I think I learnt a lot from it even though I procrastinated while doing so, could probably have finished a week or so ago. Anyway, this will probably be the last math book I read before uni starts I don’t want to do anything big since I just want to spend the rest of my time on games and other books.
Shelved as 'abandoned'
September 4, 2020Strang is great on YouTube, but this older text struggled on its way to ebook form.
Want to read
May 4, 2023Calculus
Want to read
April 9, 2015es buen libro voy leerlo. is good book
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews