Infinite Powers The Story of Calculus - The Language of the Universe

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This is a nice book. The author explores the history of calculus from the times of the Greeks to the present. The most interesting aspect is him elucidating how the ancient and medieval mathematicians used to grapple with the question of infinity. However, if you know your calculus, a lot of the stuff in this book you'd already be privy to. So I think this is for those who have only a passing knowledge of calculus.

A must for those who teach Calculus.

Book condition review: Got it today!! The book is in excellent condition.... No torn parts or even scratches.... Pages are also good, and well-printed.....Book review: Well are you still going to ask me after all those beautiful reviews..... from here (Amazon) and everywhere (ie.- your friends, elder brothers & sisters, teachers and Google😄).....????; After knowing about its author Steven Strogatz.....???? And after it is shortlisted for the ‘Royal Society Science Book Prize 2019’.......????"Undoubtedly great book....."[And to be true I got it just today(mentioned previously).... So, I'm still in the way of feeling the amazingness of it..... So, I'm still not eligible for reviewing this book bro.....🤣]Have fun in the way of enjoying the ‘infinite powers’ that you got.....All the best....!!

Everybody, and I mean it, everybody should read it. I wish I had a book like this when I was in school.This is the best thing I've read this year.

The author is absolutely amazing at distilling the essence of Calculus. I am looking forward to read his book on Non linear dynamics and chaos.

It informs you about history of calculus. How it started,why it came into existence. What are were and are its uses.

Delivery on time , condition of book excellent

Great start to this book and I am convinced of the writer's passion that Calculus is the Prince of maths.Archimides proof of the area of the circle is the highlight.Just after the Newton - Liebnitz schism. The book changes form, abandons diagrams and equations and turns into a general history of maths albeit an interesting one.So for people who want to go a bit further than BBC documentary level maths, I would recommend Ian Stewarts very excellent 17 Equations that Changed the World.

An interesting and understandable history of calculus, from about 250 BC to the present day. I've always thought it started off with Newton and Leibniz, but apparently elements of it have been around for thousands of years. I've done a few calculus courses over the years, and I wish I'd read this book first, it would have put everything into context, and made it all a bit more understandable.A word of warning for Kindle users - be careful which font you chose, otherwise some of the mathematical symbols can disappear! I found empty space where 1/3 and pi (the symbol) should have been, until I experimented with the fonts, and up they popped.

I first came across the name of Steven Strogatz when I used his excellent and readable text ‘Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos’ while tutoring undergraduate physicists on a Nonlinear Systems course. More recently I enjoyed his less technical books ‘Sync’ and ‘The Calculus of Friendship, and his 'Joy of x' podcast. I hesitated slightly over buying ‘Infinite Powers’, since I feared it might be a bit too elementary for someone who has spent decades in the world of mathematics and physics.However, I couldn’t resist the Kindle edition when it was advertised briefly in June at a special offer price. I’m very glad I bought it!The book is a celebration of the power of calculus and its centrality to so much of the modern world. Strogatz has a lively and engaging writing style, and deploys some nice turns of phrase, such as ‘calculus was the Cambrian explosion for mathematics’. He covers a remarkably wide range of topics.‘Infinite Powers’ contains lots of fascinating insights into the development of calculus (e.g. Archimedes’ fundamental contributions to its pre-history) that I’d never come across before. There are stories – new to me -- about such masters as Galileo, Kepler, Fermat, Newton (whom we can now ‘watch at play’ thanks to his college notebooks being on the Web) and Leibniz.The end notes contain many further gems, with references that I enjoyed following up. For example I learnt for the first time about Kovalevskaya’s curious integrable top, and encountered some new (to me) ideas concerning John Couch Adams and Britain’s non-discovery of Neptune.I wish this book had been available when I first met calculus some 57 years ago!

Raise your hand and say "aye" if you have ever experienced PTSD as a result of high school math lessons (aye!). In a cruel twist of fate, I find myself working in finance 10 years later and *shudders* enjoying it.Reading Infinite Powers is my small attempt at taking an interest in something I dismissed in my youth. It wasn't easy to get through, but I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. Now the only downside is that Amazon keeps recommending books about maths and physics to me... one was enough, thank you.

For many decades I have suspected that many Maths Teachers are faking. Their livelihood relies on the fact that they have memorised a route from the question to the answer... but they do not really know the neighborhood or feel comfortable in it.Anybody actually understanding of the underlying map was too busy off earning seriously decent money in a high powered job elsewhere and most unlikely to be in a school doing any empowering-of-others Teaching. If you asked the Maths Teachers at the average UK state school any searching questions in maths (that is like asking for a different route to the answer that is not too steep or over deep chasms) you were soon fobbed off (the teacher would most likely be hiding that they were themselves confused and lost) and you were made to feel stupid ( in my day- when only 2% of the UK population ever achieved higher maths).Given that it was regarded as the most powerful subject to know in the technocracy of society- those in the loop were not likely to invite the rest of us in anytime soon. In addition, the explonents of this "language of measurement" were - almost by definition- persons whose brains reduced the multi-facted world to some spare autistic equation space... and that did not lend itself to communicating well with more multi-dimensional citizens (humans, kids). Maybe they were the new species, splitting off in evolution? The nerdy Geeks ? A dangerous outcome- as they would most likely farm the rest of us for profit using obscure banking equations...For decades, I have been teaching all the lower maths using visuals and silly jokes and stuff that engage multi-dimensional (well-adjusted?) kids and trying to find someone who would visualise for me how the higher stuff was arrived at.This book appears to do just that ! I have read about 4 or 5 books on math history to back up my teaching of elementary maths. This book took me along the history of modern maths in very nice, logical steps that explain all the confusing mist that fogged my teenager brain in this subject- via historical dates and interesting b.g. on the famous characters and their personality clashes).Strogatz is clearly not a third rate tour guide but an bona fide Native of the The Number-hood... He is a Homeboy of Higher Math ! He speaks to the common man (as apparently did Galilleo when he decided to wrtite his work up in modern street Italian (a fact I learned in this book) - in tune with the idea that we may need smarter people to live better- not just more complex equations in the hands of the few... (some of you may have notided the odd snooty review that there is no math in the second half... (Duhr !!- if we were that knowledgeable we would not need this guide?!) And Strogatz also knows when to take a back alley detour that leads to a great vista that most tourists- and even many "expert" residents would miss... using only the shallowest of slopes to allow us less "mAthletic" types to follow easily.If you want to be able to at least know what the smarter set is talking about (in the general way of an informed citizen) - but not wade through a few hundred / thousand practical sums of higher maths puzzles... then I would think that this resource is a crucial piece to put on your reading list. You will get the gist of everything the experts throw at you.*(One reviewer here has stated that he found the section on telescoping down the 100 term fractions very confusing. I have a set of colourful circles (PIZZA models, cut into thirds, quarters, sixths - with each denomination a different colour that I let elementary kids stick up on a board for Mixed Number practice - (So how many pizzas is 9/6 ?)etc. I found the images of those pieces made the visualising of the fractions very simple- but I teach math to kids... The Author may want to think about incorporating even more visuals into his explanations on next print... - I am told Archimedes was a visual learner not one for modern equations (Reviel Ntez The Codex Book)?I can now imagine having enough confidence in higher maths to teach it to a teenager, using this book as an intro and guide... that is saying something, In fact, my only complaint is that it still has not solved my problem of measuring the infinitely thin slices of curvy lumps of parma ham equally between me and my brother now that the weighing scales a re playing up. Say what you like about Archimedes and the Greeks, slicing triangles into infinitely thin slices in your head is nothing to what those Italians did when they applied infinity and thin slices to the concept of sweet parma ham. A practical , real world contribution that - to my mind - makes the Roman (and Spanish Jamon) cultures far superior to the over -rated Greeks.