Tag Archives: integrals

Learning Integration

I don’t mean the social kind of integration, which I learned as a child, but the mathematical kind of integration, which I never learned in any of my math classes. I didn’t even take calculus until The Company sponsored some adult education classes for employees.

But those calc classes only got me through basic derivatives (of polynomials, mostly), so integration has been a bit of a mystery to me. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to pick up the basics.

This post just records my first attempts — my math lab book, so to speak.

Continue reading


Math Books

There are many science-minded authors and working physicists who write popular science books. While there aren’t as many math-minded authors or working mathematicians writing popular math books, it’s not a null set. I’ve explored two such authors recently: mathematician Steven Strogatz and author David Berlinski.

Strogatz wrote The Joy of X (2012), which was based on his New York Times columns popularizing mathematics. I would call that a must-read for anyone with a general interest in mathematics. I just finished his most recent, Infinite Powers (2019), and liked it even more.

Berlinski, on the other hand, I wouldn’t grant space on my bookshelf.

Continue reading