K I'm a self taught programmer and been so for a couple of years. But in order to go beyond the programming scab work (entry lvl, Tester, Web Dev, Commercial App Dev; of which I am more than grateful for) and go beyond conventional programming gigs. (I.E. R&D, Embedded Devices, Scientific Computing and the like ) I'm going for a BS in Computer Engineering. However I'm not all that great in the Calculus Department. I've taken Calculus 1 before and had to drop because of a job opportunity. But while I was in it I gotta say stuff like the Chain rule for derivatives and the like was really kicking my ass. So it seems I have a long way to go as far as the maths in school. (although Discreet Math does look fun) Learning by relating concepts known to concepts unknown seems to work well for me and I was wondering if there was any recommended materials that would provide good self study supplemental material for the time when I have to take Calculus classes again.
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A:
There is simply no better book to learn calculus than Stewart's Calculus, period. It is not aimed at programmers, but it will give you a thorough grounding in the principles. [Spivak's calculus is good, but not so easy to learn from, and it takes a more theoretical standpoint. I wish I'd had Stewart's calculus when I studied it]. I have a copy of Stewart's Calculus to hand; it's always the first place I look things up!
There is an accompanying web site here.
Have you looked at the free offerings at MIT OpenCourseware, for example: 18.085 Computational Science and Engineering I
Mitch Wheat
2010-09-08 14:37:17
Glancing over the Stewart's Calculus and MIT Stuff. I like the additional history and background info along with the explanations. Definitely gives me a bit of background as to the why and a context in which to grok much of it. Gotta say ATM I'm liking the MIT Course even though I don't all of whats being talked about but the review looks promising and the fact that the class uses Matlab is pretty helpful as well.
Terrance
2010-09-08 15:00:24