ISBN9780070576421

It definitly helps one who want to master Calculus or join the Calculus competiton of any kinds.

It better than "Calculus With Analytic Geometry, Seventh Edition" for it give you some useful appendixs and very simplify than it. It does not includ differential equation for as the author said that it is not useful when there is a full course on differential equation!!!

Another MIT student here... unfortunately not all calc. classes at MIT has stopped using this book. As a result the majority of our class is hopelessly lost... and this is at MIT!!!... now that's a testament to how bad the book is... Things aren't explained well, the examples have nothing to do with the actual problems, and without the "space wasting" graphics that so many other books have it's difficult to visualize what Simmons is talking about, and despite popular opinion visualizing what you are doing is very important to calculus. I'm relying on my HS calc book to get me through the course.

This book is perfect if you are looking for a book that has a nice balance between theory and application. Theory is presented on an as-needed basis and there is more in the appendix if the reader is so inclined. This was an excellent book for me my freshman year and it has been a good reference for me throughout my math career. It is a nice stepping stone on the way to spivak.

I have a big, dirty secret: I needed three tries to get through calculus. Needless to say, I went through (or at least started) three calculus books. The third of these was Simmons' first edition of the current volume. Dr. Simmons takes a historical approach to the material, following discovery after discovery. While today we define the derivative in terms of the limit, this definition (and the delta-epsilon proof machinery beneath the limit concept) came after the geometric notion of the tangent of a curve. I found it enormously helpful to know where I was going before I started. And why not? The great mathematicians that built the rigorous foundations beneath the calculus all knew where they had to end up.

One other topic that Dr. Simmons enjoys is arithmetic series. This topic unfolded like a flower during its presentation. As I moved into computer science, this provided valuable background to some of the iterative methods of calculation I was exposed to.

I might have a different perspective, though; George Simmons was my Calc 2 prof :-)

This book virtually made me love mathemathics. It's a book with an unique set of features in it's appendix, and the writing style of the author is almost like you are actually reading a great novel about calculus.