Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear (The Great Courses Teaching That Engages the Mind, Parts 1 an

Book Overview

This is an introduction to the concepts of calculus in a way which is understandable to those without a technical background. 24 lectures on 4 DVDs. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565856139
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: The Teaching Company
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

My son loves it

Bought this for my son, a 17 year old high school student, who has trouble getting work done in math. He likes it well enough, and is good at it, but he slows down when the going gets tough. I thought this would make the going a little easier. It's summer, and he's watching it on his own. He likes it, he's getting it, and I have a hope it will pay off.

As Promised

Product was delivered as listed. I would purchase from this seller again. Received prompt and complete return email for question as to listing details. Very professional seller.

Superb Topic, Superb Presentation

When I was in college more than two decades ago, I took three semesters of calculus and a semester of differential equations. I learned the material well enough and enjoyed doing so, but I unfortunately haven't really used calculus much since then. I decided it was time for a refresher, and thought I'd start with this TTC course, though I didn't really expect much, since I anticipated that this course would be really watered down. To my great surprise and delight, I found this course to be superb. Michael Starbird covers nearly all of the fundamental ideas of calculus, he provides good examples, his graphics are excellent, and he brings in an appropriate amount of historical context. More generally, he succeeds in showing why the development of calculus represents a huge intellectual accomplishment for humankind and an incredibly powerful tool for modeling applications. His delivery could perhaps be a bit smoother sometimes, but I like his humility and his sense of humor, and I think he explains things quite clearly almost all of the time, so I think he's a very effective lecturer. It's quite evident that Starbird has put a great deal of thought and care into developing this course. The only real way I can think of to improve this course is to add another 12+ lectures to allow more in-depth coverage of the more advanced topics which are currently just touched on in the last third of the course (calculus of variations, Stokes' theorem, Green's theorem, Gauss' theorem, etc.). A dream-come-true would be for TTC to develop a "Part 2" for this course which focuses on these advanced topics, along with a separate course on differential equations. Meanwhile, I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in learning the key concepts of calculus for the first time, or wishing to review these concepts. The only people who wouldn't benefit from this course are those who don't like math (but then why are you reading this review?) and people who already have an advanced knowledge of calculus. Bravo and thank you to Michael Starbird and TTC for this superb course!