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This article was originally published at physicsgarage.
Calculus is one of the most revolutionary ideas ever developed by Julia Fisher, Physics | Mathematics | Algorithms, published in The Startup
What is Calculus ?
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It has been used in practically all branches of mathematics and sciences. It is one of those branches of mathematics which is used across so many disciplines that it becomes much easier to appreciate the idea, unlike other topics in abstract mathematics. In spite of this fact, most people find it mysterious and complicated to understand. Introducing calculus in a classroom often requires quite a few prerequisites, and that is why it becomes slightly harder to begin. In this article we will take a very intuitive and somewhat unconventional approach to understand calculus from ground up.
This article is geared towards the reader who always wanted to learn the subject but could not find the motivation and/or the time to pick up a textbook. A more experienced reader may find the content less rigorous and/or incomplete, but the intention here is make the subject more approachable and to eventually motivate the reader to pick up that textbook.
Why Calculus ?It is reasonable to ask the following question — What kinds of problems did we try to solve which forced us to come with this new idea?...
In this article we essentially discussed just one mathematical application, i.e. rate of change of area of a circle. Next time, we will solve the speeding car problem using calculus and much more.
Source: Medium
