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http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-gentle-introduction-to-learning-calculus/
I have a love/hate relationship with calculus: it demonstrates the beauty of math and the agony of
math education.
Calculus relates topics in an elegant, brain-bending manner. My closest analogy is Darwin‘s Theory of
Evolution: once understood, you start seeing Nature in terms of survival. You understand why drugs
lead to resistant germs (survival of the fittest). You know why sugar and fat taste sweet (encourage
Calculus is similarly enlightening. Don‘t these formulas seem related in some way?
They are. But most of us learn these formulas independently. Calculus lets us start with
―circumference = 2 * pi * r‖ and figure out the others — the Greeks would have appreciated this.
Unfortunately, calculus can epitomize what’s wrong with math education. Most lessons
feature contrived examples, arcane proofs, and memorization that body slam our intuition &
enthusiasm.
I‘ve learned something from school: Math isn’t the hard part of math; motivation is. Specifically,
Self-fulfilling prophecies that math is difficult, boring, unpopular or ―not your subject‖
Textbooks and curriculums more concerned with profits and test results than insight
‗A Mathematician‘s Lament‘ [pdf] is an excellent essay on this issue that resonated with many people:
―…if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural
curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently
being done — I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless,
soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.‖
Imagine teaching art like this: Kids, no fingerpainting in kindergarten. Instead, let‘s study paint
chemistry, the physics of light, and the anatomy of the eye. After 12 years of this, if the kids (now
teenagers) don‘t hate art already, they may begin to start coloring on their own. After all, they have
―This above all else: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night follows
day, thou canst not then be false to any man.‖
–William Shakespeare, Hamlet
It‘s an elegant way of saying ―be yourself‖ (and if that means writing irreverently about math, so be
it). But if this were math class, we‘d be counting the syllables, analyzing the iambic pentameter, and
Math and poetry are fingers pointing at the moon. Don’t confuse the finger for the moon.
We‘ve forgotten that math is about ideas, not robotically manipulating the formulas that express
them.
Ok bub, what’s your great idea?
Feisty, are we? Well, here‘s what I won‘t do: recreate the existing textbooks. If you need answers
right away for that big test, there‘s plenty of websites, class videos and 20-minute sprints to help you
out.
Instead, let’s share the core insights of calculus. Equations aren‘t enough — I want the ―aha!‖
Formal mathematical language is one just one way to communicate. Diagrams, animations, and just
plain talkin‘ can often provide more insight than a page full of proofs.
I think anyone can appreciate the core ideas of calculus. We don‘t need to be writers to enjoy
Shakespeare.
It‘s within your reach if you know algebra and have a general interest in math. Not long ago, reading
and writing were the work of trained scribes. Yet today that can be handled by a 10-year old. Why?
Because we expect it. Expectations play a huge part in what‘s possible. So expect that calculus is just
another subject. Some people get into the nitty-gritty (the writers/mathematicians). But the rest of us
can still admire what‘s happening, and expand our brain along the way.
It‘s about how far you want to go. I‘d love for everyone to understand the core concepts of
Some define calculus as ―the branch of mathematics that deals with limits and the differentiation and
integration of functions of one or more variables‖. It‘s correct, but not helpful for beginners.
the sides of a right triangle. Algebra finds entire sets of numbers — if you know a and b, you
can find c.
Calculus finds patterns between equations: you can see how one equation (circumference
How do we use variables that are constantly changing? (Heat, motion, populations, …).
Algebra & calculus are a problem-solving duo: calculus finds new equations, and algebra
solves them. Like evolution, calculus expands your understanding of how Nature works.
An Example, Please
Let‘s walk the walk. Suppose we know the equation for circumference (2*pi*r) and want to find area.
What to do?
The amount of ―space‖ (area) should be the same in each case, right? And how much space does a
ring use?
Well, the very largest ring has radius ―r‖ and a circumference 2 * pi * r. As the rings get smaller their
circumference shrinks, but it keeps the pattern of 2 * pi * current radius. The final ring is more like a
Now here‘s where things get funky. Let’s unroll those rings and line them up. What happens?
We get a bunch of lines, making a jagged triangle. But if we take thinner rings, that triangle
One side has the smallest ring (0) and the other side has the largest ring (2 * pi * r)
We have rings going from radius 0 to up to ―r‖. For each possible radius (0 to r), we just place
Yowza! The combined area of the rings = the area of the triangle = area of circle!
This was a quick example, but did you catch the key idea? We took a disc, split it up, and put the
segments together in a different way. Calculus showed us that a disc and ring are intimately related: a
This is a recurring theme in calculus: Big things are made from little things. And sometimes the
A note on examples
Many calculus examples are based on physics. That‘s great, but it can be hard to relate: honestly, how
often do you know the equation for velocity for an object? Less than once a week, if that.
I prefer starting with physical, visual examples because it‘s how our minds work. That ring/circle
thing we made? You could build it out of several pipe cleaners, separate them, and straighten them
into a crude triangle to see if the math really works. That‘s just not happening with your velocity
equation.
I can feel the math pedants firing up their keyboards. Just a few words on ―rigor‖.
Did you know we don‘t learn calculus the way Newton and Leibniz discovered it? They used intuitive
ideas of ―fluxions‖ and ―infinitesimals‖ which were replaced with limits because “Sure, it works in
We‘ve created complex mechanical constructs to ―rigorously‖ prove calculus, but have lost our
We‘re looking at the sweetness of sugar from the level of brain-chemistry, instead of recognizing it as
everyone understood calculus to the ―non-rigorous‖ level that Newton did? That it changed how they
A premature focus on rigor dissuades students and makes math hard to learn. Case in point: e is
technically defined by a limit, but the intuition of growth is how it was discovered. The natural log can
be seen as an integral, or the time needed to grow. Which explanations help beginners more?
Let‘s fingerpaint a bit, and get into the chemistry along the way.
Where next?
My goal is to begin presenting a beautiful, oft-maligned subject in a new light. Many ideas are more
Averages
Pythagorean Theorem
Imaginary Numbers
Div, Grad, Flux and Curl (if you already know vector calculus)
My knowledge of calculus is still very mechanical, but I know this can change. As I explore this topic
I‘ll cover the insights that worked, hoping you‘ll chime in with what has helped you. Here‘s the first:
Happy math.
(PS: A kind reader has created an animated powerpoint slideshow that helps present this idea more
visually. Thanks!)
10. How To Understand Derivatives: The Quotient Rule, Exponents, and Logarithms
Let's create a living reference for how best to understand this topic.
I knew circles and triangles were related, because my Geometry teacher told us they were,
Kalid
Ben
It's maybe a little outside the scope of the discussion, but what struck me about the circle ->
triangle transformation was how elegantly it shows the superiority of tau as the circle constant.
Typically, pi*r^2 is trotted out as the example of why circumference over diameter is preferable
to circumference over radius, but that triangle just screams to me "I am half of a rectangle!"
Kalid
Great point Ben!
Ralph
Brilliant, simple and fun explanation! It made me get up and walk around the room, beaming
kalid
Zubair
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seeing the graph and relating that to the are of he triangle 1❤6
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"A premature focus on rigor dissuades students and makes math hard to learn." A ton of
Awesome, glad it clicked. To crib a programming phrase, premature rigor is the root of teaching
evil.
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Two insights from elsewhere that helped me were: 1. Sylvanus P Thompson wrote about a
person climbing a graph and said something to the effect that "he feels a particular steepness
... can we find out what it is"? Made the goal very concrete and intuitive.
1. When I realized that the function we were trying to find the slope of actually fully
contains all the "knowledge" of every point that will be on the graph, and therefore, it
already "contains" the "knowledge" of the "steepness" at every point. In fact, it contains
the knowledge of how that steepness changes. And it became intuitive that the slope
should be a "simpler" version of the original function itself that is "derived" from it. I
wonder if that has anything to do with the terminology of "taking a derivative", but I
kalid
2. Having a visceral experience of "steepness" is really cool, I like that. I'm almost feeling
you can monitor it and figure out their monthly income. And if you're monitoring their
income, you can then figure out if they've received a raise. And if you know the raise is
tied to the performance of the company, you can then figure out the performance of the
company... all from looking at their bank account! Each step is "simpler", i.e. the bank
account has the raw data, and each level has a slightly simpler look.
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Sign me up! I did all that crazy ―area under the curve‖ stuff at school, but never understood how it
REALLY worked. y=2x^2 => dy/dx = 4x…sure, but what the heck is going on. They lost me when the
I‘ve nevertheless remained interested in maths over the 20 years since, and here‘s the crack: your
article is brilliant. I can absolutely get what you‘re talking about. Your circle example is dynamite, and
I also found the idea that calculus ―finds patterns between equations‖ very intuitive.
Now let me remember, my little equation is differentiation. That‘s like taking pi.r^2 back to 2pi.r So
what you showed was integration; which makes sense to me as you did take the area under a curve.
So, to differentiate pi.r^2 I don‘t ask for dy/dx, but rather something/dr I don‘t see any other letter,
Beautiful commentary. I‘m currently taking Calculus III, and have already finished Differential
Equations. For my degree, these would be the final mathematics courses I would need. However,
recently I‘ve felt that it‘s all starting to make sense and come together, and I‘ve found that
mathematics is quite elegant. After a certain point, I don‘t feel awed by its complexity, but rather it‘s
simplicity. How an incredibly seemingly complex relationship can be broken down into a symbolically
simple idea is truly beautiful. I‘ve decided to continue taking some mathematics courses in my next
It really is a shame that the way mathematics is presented creates a negative impression from grade
school on. Conceptually, it is beautiful and elegant and explanatory and all-encompassing. If I had
been introduced to mathematics in that form when I was younger, I would have probably been hooked
then.
My favorite moments in horrible math classes in high school and junior high would be when the
teacher would digress and just talk about the nature of zero or infinity or other interesting concepts.
Of course, the teacher would usually end with something like, ―Well, anyway, to get back on topic…‖
I‘m not saying that a conceptual presentation of mathematics should precede basic grade school
necessities like arithmetic, but it should definitely have its place. By misrepresenting the elegant
nature of mathematics, we are restricting students who would otherwise begin to take interest.
I like these sorts of examples for people who have never seen calculus before because, honestly, the
subject is not that hard. Give me an above-average student and I can teach them the basics of
But it‘s rarely the basics that get people. These methods, after all, were how calculus developed up
getting counter-intuitive results with these so-called ―intuitive‖ methods that they decided an
absolutely rigorous foundation for calculus (and all of mathematics) was necessary.
So, the only caveat is that while these methods might be intuitive and help people just learning
calculus, there are limits at which this type of reasoning breaks down and we simply can‘t reconcile
Being an Engineer, I understand the pain a naive student goes through when he is burdened with
truck load of Calculus books having tons of theorems, proofs and unimaginable number of weird
I scored well in my engineering mathematic subjects but I never really understood the point of
I wish we had someone like you who could paint such a wonderful picture and make the subject more
relevant to students.
I look forward to whatever article you come up with next in the series.
(BTW, where are you from? I wud love to meet a genius like you sometime!)
I just wanted to say I‘ve been reading your blog for some time now, but I just had to let you know
every article is great and very informative, I just wish you wrote more often =) (j/k I know it must be
make the circle into triangle thing into a video and post a link to youtube?
You said: ―Instead, let‘s share the core insights of calculus. Equations aren‘t enough — I want the
―aha!‖ moments that make everything click.‖ Amen! Those ―aha!‖ moments make live worth living (or
―[...] they decided an absolutely rigorous foundation for calculus (and all of mathematics) was
necessary‖
Well ―they‖ may have decided that, but they failed. No mathematical system is absolutely perfect.
There are always holes to poke. This is the essence of Gödel‘s work. Your system will never be
rigorous enough to always be right, but it might be rigorous enough to work for the problems you care
about.
@Paul: You got it — we were essentially integrating the equation for circumference. But if you call it
that from the outset, and define it rigorously, people‘s eyes will glaze over .
And as you said, the use of x (input) and y (output) are conventions. So the regular way would be to
say the equation is really 2 * pi * x, where x is the radius (never mind that we always learned it as 2
One interesting thing about integration is seeing how something that doesn‘t ―look‖ like a curve (a
@Mike: Thanks for the awesome comment! You really nailed it, there are such beautiful ideas buried
in math, which could really encourage people, but don‘t have a chance because we jump into the
details.
Conceptual discussions & drills have their place. It may be like listening to fun music (rock, rap, etc.)
and being inspired to play. Then you start learning an instrument and memorize scales (doing drills).
Drills are much more manageable when you have an appreciation for why you‘re doing them.
Those side discussions you mention can be awesome — it highlights the discovery side of math. For
every equation, there was someone seeing it for the first time and saying ―whoa‖.
@Jesse: That‘s a very good point. I see it similar to teaching Physics: we start with Newtonian
mechanics, which are ―intuitive‖ to a degree. Then, as people advance, we teach them about the
exceptions: strange things happen at the speed of light (relativity) and when you get really small
(quantum mechanics).
But if we started off with relativity and quantum we‘d lose everyone along the way.
@Prateek: Thanks for the kind words! Just a curious learner here. I know what you mean — I‘ve taken
many math classes, but the formulas just seemed to stay there, and didn‘t really change how I viewed
the world.
I‘m usually in the Boston or Seattle area, and if you‘re around feel free to drop me an email
(kalid@instacalc.com).
@Justin: Thank you for the kind words, that really means a lot. Yeah, I wish I posted more frequently
too .
The articles can be time consuming (10-15 hours) but I think my brain is the bottleneck —
procrastination, perfectionism, and sometimes it‘s a struggle to have a ―good enough‖ insight (I don‘t
want to rewrite what‘s already on wikipedia). Maybe I can find a way to trick myself into writing more
@James: That would be awesome. Unfortunately I don‘t have any animation skills either.
@Rodrigo: I agree — math would be a boring place if it was only about pushing numbers around .
at some point you have to say ―this seems to work, it‘s good enough, let‘s run with it‖.
Unfortunately the quest to make calculus rigorous turned it into something which isn‘t as easily
This is something I‘ve learned from my quite limited independent study of calculus, which is my
personal way of looking at it: calculus is all about how things change. The derivative is one tiny
change, and the integral is the sum of many tiny changes. That explanation works quite well, to me,
for setting up equations that use calculus. It also makes the fundamental theorem of calculus very
simple to understand.
I have to agree about math education; I‘m reminded every day that there are people intelligent
enough to understand math who don‘t get it because it‘s not explained in a way that makes sense
intuitively. It wasn‘t even until about a year or two ago that I started to really understand math and
I‘m sick of the way the education system teaches math, so much that I‘ve considered writing a
textbook in the style I think math should be taught. To me, it‘s simple: learn the way that it was
originally discovered. It was discovered through intuition, and that‘s the best way to learn it.
I‘ll cut short my rambling here. I‘ve given you too much to read as it is.
Hi Zac, thanks for the comment. Yep, seeing the derivative and integral that way (in terms of
changes) can really give an intuitive feel — and the fundamental theorem becomes that much clearer.
I agree with you about math education — I think many people are capable of learning the subject, but
it‘s not presented in the best way. We tend to show the final result without all the steps along the way
— and those steps are what build intuition. It surprises me that people don‘t often write about their
Hi,
Wow! You have communicated a beautiful simplicity. I have several books on calculus (Calculus for
Dummys, Math for the Millions, etc. etc.–never was able to read them) but your explanation is what I
Doug Hogg
P.S. Since it only communicates to people who know calculus, I think you could leave this line out:
―I‘d feel I cheated if I called calculus ―the study of limits, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series‖.
―You know why sugar and fat taste sweet (encourage consumption of high-calorie foods in times of
scarcity).‖
Sounds like just as strong an argument for Creation if you ask me! Sugar and fat are provided to aid
survival, and our bodies are designed to make use of them in an optimum way. Sweet fruits
encourage consumption and hence spreading of seeds for survival; sounds like a good ―plan‖ to me.
I enjoy your articles, but weakly weaving religion into an article on math is unnecessary and, frankly, I
such a painful process to get to where I understand it that by the time I do, I‘m sick of it and don‘t
want to do it anymore. I would be so much better at it if I bothered to practice it, but I hate it so
much that I don‘t WANT to practice it. I‘m in my first year of college, and the placement test put me in
trigonometry (I don‘t know how, because I only made it through a year and a half of high school
algebra before I gave up), but I only have to take college algebra to transfer, so that‘s what I‘m going
But reading this post…well, it kind of made me want to learn how to like math. It made me CURIOUS
about numbers, which has honestly never happened before. The rings-into-triangle thing was the
biggest ―AHA!‖ moment I‘ve ever had regarding math. It made sense, so I liked it. (I like things when
I understand them, see. Like, solving gigantic equations is ridiculously fun, because I know how to do
it.)
Anyway. I am rambling. But thank you, thank you! I feel like there‘s a glimmer of hope that I might
be able to get a handle on math if I just look at it differently. I never thought of it being ideas; it was
just brain-numbing formula memorisation until now. And I hate it when I‘m unable to do something,
so I really would love to be able to do math and not excuse myself by saying it isn‘t my subject. Your
definition of calculus made so much more sense than the ones I‘ve heard.
@Mark
2nd Paragraph:
―Calculus relates topics in an elegant, brain-bending manner. My closest analogy is Darwin‘s Theory of
Evolution: once understood, you start seeing Nature in terms of survival. You understand why drugs
create stronger germs (survival of the fittest). You know why sugar and fat taste sweet (encourage
I guess I don‘t see where Kalid is ―weakly weaving religion into an article on math.‖ Or was your
wording a bit. It makes me chuckle when I see complex subjects (calculus) explained in terms of other
complex subjects (limits, integrals, etc.), without at least _some_ plain-english explanation. How is a
beginner looking up what calculus means supposed to have an idea of what it does?
@Mark: I‘m not sure I understand the connection to creation — the goal was to use evolution as an
example of a simple, unifying theory that can explain a lot of natural behavior.
Animals that hated sugar, fat and other high-calorie foods probably starved when times were tough.
But their siblings with a sweet tooth probably survived, which selected for that trait. Evolutionary
pressure gives an explanation of why sugar would seem sweet to us today (I‘m not a biologist, there
Anyway, the point is that calculus finds similar connections/underlying themes between math — there
Without calculus, the similarity in the equations just looks like a happy coincidence, much like ―sugar
is sweet and spoiled food tastes bad‖ might seem like a lucky coincidence without the theory of
@Kat: That‘s awesome! I love getting those ―aha‖ moments and I‘m happy you were able to get
excited about calculus ideas (it‘s a rare thing in this day and age).
You definitely can get a handle on math — I really believe it‘s a skill like writing. Once upon a time,
everyone thought reading & writing were ―hard‖ and only for scribes; today everyone does it.
The hardest part about math can be staying interested and keeping your motivation, so hang in there!
Seeing it as just another way to talk about an idea can help get the big picture. And you‘re right, when
@Kalid:
Your implication appears to be that evolution is THE theory that provides the ―aha‖ level of
understanding the natural world. Yet the example you provided is just as easily explained by creation.
It came off a bit preachy to me and detracted from an otherwise well-written article.
I always wanted to learn this calculus stuff. Tho I seemed to have survived the last 40 years of
electronics and computer theory without it, I‘ve always had a curiosity about just what all those
squiggly lines were on the old chalk boards. I think you have succeeded in clearing up some of the
fog. (so far so good anyway) Please keep up the good work you have been doing on this web site. I
@Mark: Point taken, and happy for the discussion. I think the key point behind it all is that the
sweetness of sugar serves a purpose (to help us survive) — but if we don‘t notice this underlying
theme then we miss many of connections that exist in the real world.
@Paul: Thanks for dropping in, and for your comment! Glad to make things clearer as I can — the
funny thing is that despite using the squiggly lines many times, they tended to stay in the realm of
abstract symbols without much inherent meaning. So I‘m trying to go back and relearn the stuff with
the viewpoint of ―it has to mean something!‖. I‘ll keep writing as best I can .
Absolutely magnificent. One of the best things I‘ve ever stumbled upon. The analogy with finger
Keep it up!!
Thanks Grey, I‘m thrilled you enjoyed it so much! Yes, not letting people fingerpaint (with the absence
of tests & grades) can destroy a child‘s interest in a subject. ―Drill & kill‖, I‘ve heard it been called.
Best Regards
Team
Hi Kalid,
I‘ve been waiting for this article/series about calculus for few months since started reading your blog.
I tried to learn calculus myself few times. I‘ve learned something I knew how to compute some simple
examples but I‘ve been missing that ―Aha‖ moments so much. So I‘ve decided that I‘ll wait until you
start to write about the calculus, since you explained so well every area you wrote about so far
(exponential functions, natural log, complex numbers, …) and in the meantime I‘ll spend my math
time in other areas. I‘m very lucky that I did such choice. Your article is, as always, so enlightening
and clear. I‘m very happy to have such a great math teacher! Thanks you so much for such
material.
Also, I would like to mention the book by Keith Devlin, ―The Language of Mathematics: Making the
Invisible Visible‖, which actually brings me to the interest in math, one or two years ago. Without that
book I would probably not read this blog and would not believe in my bright math days So for
others asking ―Why Math?‖ or searching for a lot of ―Aha!‖ moments, the Keith‘s book is great reading
@Martin: Thank you for the wonderful comment — I‘m glad you‘re finding the articles helpful! I‘ll try
Thanks for the book recommendation, I‘ll need to check that out. I‘m always interested in resources
WOW.
amazing stuff, when you first told me you were going to write an article how real world calculus I
thought it‘d be a stretch. this was very impressive, and made it easy to understand.
I like your approach, I used to learn very complex subjects by picking up the kids editions of things, it
gave me the 80% i needed to know to be able to converse in very little time.
nice job.
It‘s Paul from comment #1 again. Thanks for the reply Kalid. Again, the article is brilliant.
I wonder, does the triangle analogy also work with squares instead of discs? If the side length is x, the
perimeter is 4x. I apply your awesome triangle procedure and get (1/2).x.4x which is 2x^2; but I was
Best wishes,
Paul
@Pham: Thanks man, glad you enjoyed it . Yeah, it‘s funny how explaining stuff ―for kids‖ can force
you to distill all the mumbo-jumbo into its most basic elements (and therefore making it more clear
for everyone).
@Paul: Thanks for dropping by. That‘s a great question — I think using a square should work. The
tricky part is that even with ―square rings‖, we only want to take the radius (x/2).
Looking at the jagged triangle, you can see how you could bend the sides all the way around to make
a circle. Thus, we‘re only measuring the ―outward‖ distance from the center, since the perimeter
wraps around. Similarly for the square, you can imagine that we‘re bending the jagged triangle into 4
corners — we move from the center to the right side, but the height of each line can wrap around the
Keep up the fantastic maths analysis. Your diagramatic, pictoral explanations should be taught around
the world.
Amazing! Four semesters of mind-numbing calculus in engineering and I was blown away by the circle
triangle example. Never really looked at such a basic relation in this light! Can‘t wait for more!
Awesome, glad it helped you! I know what you mean — sometimes we get stuck in the nitty-gritty of
integrals and derivatives that we don‘t realize that calculus was buried inside the formulas we learned
in middle school .
One of the things that I have tried to encourage engineers and mathematicians to do is to tell things
to me as though I were 8 years old. You‘ve done that here and I am a wee bit wiser for it. Nothing is
difficult if the teacher cares enough to make it simple. Congratulations for a [formerly] calculus-shy
lawyer.
38. Kalid on May 12, 2008 at 9:12 pm said:
Hi Richard, glad you found it useful! The funny thing is that many engineers & mathematicians would
prefer the 8-year old version too! Many people end up learning the mechanics but not the insight of
Kalid, Thanks for such a wonderful article. So far I have never understood maths ―the way it needs to
My wish is that you write a book on Maths in ―Simple & easy to understand‖ way and i would definitely
Hi Vasanth, thanks for the message . I think math can be understood a variety of ways (intuitively,
mechanically, etc.) and you need them all to have a good grasp. Usually, though, we only focus on the
mechanical aspects.
On the book, I think it would be a great idea. Currently I‘m looking into collecting these pages and
organizing them into a series. Maybe after I get a few calculus posts under my belt .
I‘ve been reading your blog for months now, and I think everything you write is well thought out,
Calculus was by far my favorite math subject. I had so many ―a-ha!‖ moments that I felt like the
I think it would be great if in a follow-up article you discuss the relationship between velocity and
acceleration. In this modern world there‘s so many everyday analogies to be made, and I think
determining the rate of change of a rate of change is something that is easily overlooked, yet so
elegant once you realize it. It might also be too simple for your blog, but I‘d love to see a Kalid
Another related topic I think would be simple yet interesting is events happening in instantaneous vs
discrete time, although personally I can‘t think of any good examples for that. I just remember how
shocked I was that we could determine an object‘s velocity at any given instant and totally remove
change in time from the equation, yet it is still inherently dependent on time!
Hi Kai, thanks for the message! I‘m glad you‘re enjoying the articles, I really believe that there are
interesting nuggets in any subject — sometimes we just have to dig for them .
I think the relationship of acceleration to velocity is a good one, I‘m thinking about how best to
present it. Even in a car, you don‘t set your *speed* — you push down the gas or brake, which
accelerates you, which changes your velocity, which changes your distance. So really, the distance
you travel is ultimately a ―function‖ of where your foot is on the pedal. I think it‘d be an interesting
The use of instantaneous rates is intriguing as well, I‘m trying to figure out the best way to approach
the limit concept. It‘s essentially a machination from the 1800s to deal with ―infinitely small
changes‖/infinitesimals which had been used intuitively before then. Again, a topic that will need a bit
of thinking.
Did you know we don‘t learn calculus the way Newton and Leibniz discovered it?
seen that, or anything like that, witch should be mind bogling since i‘m a seniour student in a
technical college and my knowledge of math and physics is way above that of the average layman.
I have my own example of math being tought moronically. I remember once when our high school
physics teacher asked us what was the integral(antiderivative) of 1/VdV(the work being done in an
isothermal transformation), and no one had a clue, witch was rather odd given that we we‘re pretty
good at math, and all of us knew the antiderivative for 1/xdx however the antiderivative of 1/VdV,
@Sarnath: Yes, I consider it ironic that Newton probably wouldn‘t recognize calculus as we teach it
today .
@Paul: Thanks for the message. Yep, sometimes we get so deep into the nitty-gritty that we forget
how calculus can help us see relationships between ―everyday‖ equations. And sometimes we get
I ―StumbledUpon‖ this a few days ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it! I had, especially in retrospect, a
great calculus teacher in high school. We learned a lot of the intuitive aspects of the subject, but at
the time I didn‘t realize how unusual and great that was! Unfortunately, it been a long time, and I‘ve
forgotten a lot. Thanks for publishing this explanation, it makes me want to revisit the subject!
But the real reason I‘m posting is because of what Mark said in the comments above. I wasn‘t going to
say anything, because religion vs science arguments belong in a different forum, and I felt it was very
big of Kalid to say, ―@Mark: Point taken, and happy for the discussion.‖ And then he very deftly
sidestepped the whole subject and restated his original point without the ―offending‖ reference to
scientific theory. It was definitely a very mature way of handling an immature poster, and I‘m hesitant
However, it really bothers me that we tend to treat these pushy religious types as if their ―theories‖ of
the origin of life and the origin of the universe deserve respect, or as if they‘re harmless. Now people
will always believe crazy things, and that‘s fine. But a lot of these people are making an organized,
concerted effort to undermine human progress, and with our ecosystem in such a delicate position, we
―I enjoy your articles, but weakly weaving religion into an article on math is unnecessary and, frankly,
I didn‘t think it was your style.‖ The first word or concept on the page having anything to do with
religion is in Mark‘s previous paragraph, when he brings up ―Creation.‖ Apparently, Mark is saying that
the theory of evolution is a religion. The simple fact that he believes this shows how ignorant we can
be if we hold false beliefs. Ignorance is often very dangerous. Especially widespread ignorance. This
also shows how rude and pushy these religious types can be, while making it seem as if we are
slighting them, by (in this case) not making allowances for somebody‘s random, wacky religious
―Your implication appears to be that evolution is THE theory . . .‖ Just as the theory of gravity is THE
theory we have to explain the observable fact that gravity exists, the theory of evolution by natural
selection is THE theory that explains the observable fact that evolution exists. There are no others. Go
ahead, try and name one. But remember, in order to qualify as a theory, it must explain the available
evidence, and it must make predictions which are testable. In other words, it must be refutable.
―It came off a bit preachy to me.‖ This is so ridiculous I just had to include it. Sorry. It would make me
I just think that the most important way to combat the kind of ignorance that leads to the election of
incompetent public officials is to combat ignorance whenever we encounter it in our daily lives. Sort of
Now this post really is preachy! Sorry, Kalid. Now I‘ve had my say, I‘ll leave it alone. I Promise.
I have to disagree with you on your Shakespeare example. Sure, it gets at the idea ―be yourself,‖ but
there‘s a reason Shakespeare didn‘t just say ―be yourself.‖ The Shakespeare quote is beautiful, and to
figure out why, we can diagram the sentence, figure out the meter, look at word choice — in short,
figure out *why* it is beautiful. All of those components contribute to the way the sentence functions,
so it‘s important to look at them. There‘s a reason we don‘t read simplified, abridged, plain-language
This is great!
I flunked math all through high school and ended up doing basic math and algebra in a community
college. I found a great teacher there who could turn the lessons around 180º and explain it so I could
finally understand it. I found out I was a visual learner, but when I got to calculus class, it all fell apart
again. I could understand the concepts – I couldn‘t put together the equations.
Funny thing is, I love numbers and thanks to Mechanical Universe, I like physics. I found a book called
Physics Without Calculus and truly enjoyed it because I could ―see‖ the problems. As soon as calculus
Hi,
it‘s probably not your favorite topic, but since you mention evolution, couldn‘t you write an article
about it? So many people walk around and think they can argue against it, while the effects are so
plain obvious.
@Jeff: Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed the post! Yeah, mixing ―religion & science‖ can be a
touchy subject. To me, science is about knowledge and religion is about ethics, and you shouldn‘t use
one to determine the other. I usually don‘t address it in posts since it‘s unlikely for either person to
change their opinion based on a few paragraphs on a website. In this particular example, I‘m not as
interested in anyone‘s reasons why something is so, as much as the effects (sugar/fat serve a higher
meaning (not just one or the other). Unfortunately, math education tends to focus on the former.
@Kelly: Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Yes, calculus can be visual and intuitive, but often it‘s buried
underneath a pile of equations. The equations are useful, but can be really dense without any kind of
intuitive grasp (I had a similar experience with vector calculus — it didn‘t really start making sense
until I visualized it). Appreciate the book suggestion, I‘ll have to add this to the reading list.
@darwin: It would be an interesting article, though I‘m currently not that well versed in the biological
particulars . But yep, it would be cool as it‘s a very powerful and far-reaching observation.
Ive always enjoyed math classes, I guess that Ive been lucky enough to have good teachers although
they did use the conventional teaching system. The things is that the only way I could study math and
remember formulas was to make sense of them. So, while others tried to memorize what formula and
when to aply it I was trying to understand why that formula and why use it there. After a while I
realized that studying math was quite enjoyable and easy if you went and understood what were you
Its been more or less 7 years since that revelation was made and Im still studying math related
degree, economics. Coming across this article has been interesting since it describes exactly what I
felt back in that day, and even though its elemental math for me, its reminded me of the beauty that
math has and I had forgotten with subjects like Econometrics and advanced statistics, cause if you
dont go to class its very hard to internalize and understand huge formulas. LOL. But anyways.
Very well written but most of all, I admire someone whos making this effort just for the sake of math
and the bad name it has among the young, and I hope that many of them come across this to learn to
Manu
Spain
Hi Manu, thanks for the message! Yes, I‘ve always enjoyed knowing the ―why‖ not just the ―how‖ —
unfortunately, for many students it‘s not obvious that this understanding is important unless they
I can‘t imagine how I did pass all my math subjects back in college. My professor presented the
subject just the way you presented your circle-triangle area presentation.
Hi,
I am an engineer by profession. I scored well in math during my school days and college days
too(That is the beauty of current math education you can score well without understanding anything
about solution). For nearly 12 years right from my higher secondary school to college, I have asked all
my teachers why we should learn calculus and where we should apply it (The best ones gave the
example of speed,velocity and accelaration nothing more than that). Others gave a list of formulas to
memorize.
I went through this article in your site and atlast found the answer. We are really blessed to have this
internet,stumble and blog. God bless you. I have been searching through lots of books and lots of
sites regarding calculus. But never had that A-ha moment. I had it when I read your article. I dont
have words to explain my happiness. you have unwound a knot that was tied 12 years before. Thanks
Ferose Khan J
Hi Ferose, thank you for such a wonderful message! It means a lot that the article was able to help
understand this subject — I know what you mean about the memorization vs. understanding, I had
plenty of ―cram and forget‖ sessions in school. It just wasn‘t satisfying to manipulate the equations
Again, I‘m really happy the article was able to help, I‘m planning on doing a series on calculus so I
I very much enjoyed your article Kalid. As many posters have, I applaud your effort in sharing
But the real reason I‘m posting… in a nutshell (I love those books) ―the greatest measure of intellect
and knowledge is recognizing how much you don‘t know.‖ Jeff‘s premise that ignorance=belief in
creation and education=belief in the theory of evolution is belied by the fact that many of the most
educated and intellectual people (including many, many scientists) do not believe in that theory.
Einstein professed belief in intelligent design. And no matter what you may say when it comes to (as
science likes to call it) ―first cause‖ your mouths open and close as you stutter to say something but
I do appreciate your respect for other people‘s opinions Kalid. I wish more people would realize how
much claimed ―knowledge‖ really is just opinion and more respect should be accorded. I also wish I
Again, excellent article and I look forward to reading more from you.
Hi Corey, thanks for the comment, I‘m happy you‘re enjoying the article.
The question about ignorance and knowledge is a good one. In fact, I think an admission of ignorance
is a prerequisite for understanding because everyone needs to accept the possibility that their current
Otherwise, we‘d still believe in a geocentric universe, chariots pulling the Sun, etc — you cannot teach
The primary difference, to me, is what constitutes the gap when we don‘t understand something, like
the origin of the universe. Is the gap filled by something fundamentally unknowable (God, Nature,
etc.), or is it just an idea we haven‘t discovered yet, like gravity moving the planets?
That‘s more of a personal/philosophical question that isn‘t along the lines of what I discuss today, and
unfortunately can lead to counter productive discussions (it can become a heated topic, and I don‘t
know many people who said ―I drastically changed my opinion based on a comment I read online‖
).
So, I‘m primarily interested in explaining what we currently understand, knowing it may not be
complete (Newtonian Physics to Einstein‘s Physics to whatever comes next). However, we‘ve got to
start somewhere: All models are flawed, but some are useful.
lol i already love math, and this article just made me love it even more ..
@Anonymous: That‘s great! Yes, sometimes math can be really, really painful or really really fun —
I‘m trying to find ways to turn the former into the latter .
I‘m recently finished with the 9th grade, and I do have to agree with what you‘ve said on the majority
of the math programs being taught today. I love math (yep, I‘m a math geek) but that‘s only because
I always focus on the intuition of it. I absolutely hate having to memorize numbers of formulas, so
instead I simply figure out why they work. The core ideas behind all of these discoveries just shed new
light on how you view everything. I talk to a couple of kids in my math class, and the majority of them
hate math, but if I ever try to get in deeper than the memorized formulas and ideas they‘re taught to
know and not really understand they never seem to have any idea what‘s going on beneath it all.
I probably seem like I‘m rambling now, but that‘s because it‘s 2:40 AM where I am, and I‘m pretty
tired.
Anyway, these two article‘s have been great, and I‘ve completely clicked on nearly everything you‘ve
said. I especially liked what you wrote about the epiphany like moments when you finally have an
intuitive grasp over the concepts, because I end up having those a lot whenever I‘ve been thinking
into an idea for a while. It was also pretty interesting looking through that proof of the area of a circle
where the one I had learned was completely different. It had to do with the an equation of the area of
a regular polygon with n sides (1/2 * perimeter * apothem) and if you imagined adding sides to a
polygon until it was a circle, the apothem would the the radius, and the perimeter would be the
circumference, and you plug that in and then you get pi*r^2.
This was a pretty great find for such a late internet excursion, and I have to say I‘m looking forward to
Hi Hank, thanks for the wonderful message! I‘m really impressed that you‘re searching for intuitive
insights this early in school, as you mention most people just want to memorize the formula and move
on. But that attitude will really help you in learning, so congratulations!
That‘s an interesting proof for the area as well — one thing I like about math is that there‘s so many
ways to understand the same result. So part of what I try to do is collect the various insights that
worked for me, since it‘s not always explained in that way. I haven‘t set a date on the next calculus
To me it always seems as though creationists refute their own arguments. I enjoy finding these posts
where they seem willing to talk more about their beliefs, letting us see more about the thought
Corey, when you say, ―I wish more people would realize how much claimed ―knowledge‖ really is just
opinion,‖ who do you believe is claiming unsubstantiated facts? Is it the biologists, who consider any
refutable theory that supports the observations? Or the creationists, who claim to know the designer
of the universe, no matter what the observations might reveal? Which one of these (the biologist or
the creationist) will readily tell you, as you suggest, the details of exactly how much they don‘t know
When you wrote, ―many of the most educated and intellectual people (including many, many
scientists) do not believe in that theory,‖ I found myself at first doubting your sincerity. This claim has
been made in the past by some disreputable people, but has been thoroughly debunked. You probably
are sincere, but just don‘t realize that you have been mislead.
If you doubt this fact, I urge you to check out Project Steve, from the National Center for Science
Education. Although the Discovery Institute has A PAGE of signatures from scientists of various
qualifications, the statement they signed does not suggest that they ―do not believe in that theory.‖ It
is a vague, thick statement that does not include the word ‗evolution‘, and states that study of
―Darwinian theory should be encouraged.‖ Project Steve sets forth a very clear, unequivocal, concrete
statement supporting evolution and specifically against ‗Intelligent Design‘. The only people eligible to
sign this statement are scientists named ‗Steve‘. (This is estimated to be approximately one percent of
all scientists who are eligible to sign this statement, should they choose.) To date there are EIGHT
When you say, ―Einstein professed belief in intelligent design,‖ I suspect you are repeating fabricated
talking points used in church groups to convince the ‗believers‘ that they are smart, and right. Albert
Einstein wrote, ―The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human
weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless
pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.‖ He also wrote many
other things expressing disdain for religion. And the phrase ―intelligent design‖ is something the
Your point that very little is understood about ―first cause‖ is of course true, and how exciting! There is
so much left to learn! But clearly, the origin of life and the origin of the universe are completely
Corey, I hope that you and everyone reading this can see that there‘s nothing wrong with being
wrong. We are ALL wrong about many, many things. I myself have discovered I was completely wrong
about some things which I was utterly sure of. Being mistaken, or wrong, or holding false beliefs is
part of being human. The ability to RECOGNIZE our mistakes, and LEARN from them is perhaps our
While I very much appreciate having my opinions respected, and living in a time and place that such a
thing is possible, opinion really doesn‘t enter into evolution, or science in general, in a very significant
Now I‘m sure that nothing I could possibly write here could change your beliefs, and that is as it
should be. But in much the same way that what you wrote sparked an interest and a new
understanding in myself, I hope that you can also derive some satisfaction from this submission.
in all mi internet travails i hav never found such a clean and easy to understand explanation of
calculus!
@Pirx: Thanks for the eloquent comment. I agree — my focus is understanding ideas via
People can believe what they like, but understanding the (currently known) mechanisms behind
phenomena, such as evolution or gravity, helps understand more about the world. The orbits of the
planets are not a mystery but follow a predictable pattern. And yep, a huge realization is knowing that
our understanding may not be fully correct will constantly improve — actually, that‘s why I called this
@Tushin: Thanks!
It seems that maths and science are taught in completely contrasting styles, as the article (which I‘d
like to add was fantastic, I wish I was taught like this) and several posts point out. Science does teach
complicated things in a historical fashion: In England at least, Bohr‘s outdated, yet simple, model of
the atom is taught up to age 16, then 17-18 a summary version of the quantum atom is taught. I wish
@MRW: Ah, that‘s a great insight. Yes, understanding the historical context can help refine
The nice thing about math is that it never gets outdated or incorrect, better techniques just come
along. So we can learn that Archimedes was developing ideas that led to the theory of Calculus, like
Bohr made a model that led to quantum theory (it would be hard to jump from nothing to quantum
theory, or from nothing to Calculus, but that‘s how it‘s often taught!). Thanks for writing.
Okay, I jumped to the comment section to leave a comment before reading the rest of your wonderful
article. Sue me
I‘m not particularly great at math, but far along enough to realize how stunningly beautiful the
I doubt much has changed since I was a student, and here‘s a little something every student should
know. The educational system is generally not structured to teach you much of anything. It exists to
discover and promote students with the promise to thrive in corporate ranks. Nothing more and
nothing less. Really, ―When was the last time you heard the word entrepreneur mentioned in an
Hi TJ, thanks for the comment! Yes, unfortunately the educational system doesn‘t seem focused on
real insights (more test memorization, which is quickly forgotten) and the reward system for
professors in universities is not geared to reward the best teaches (publish or perish). This site is just
That was beautiful. You have no idea how much this has helped me.
Thank you.
too long
@Hank: Thanks for the encouragement, the next one is in the works as we speak !
Kalid -
You are a gifted teacher. Thanks for your clear, concise explanations. I plan to visit your site often.
Dave Anderson
Kalid, you are the man. The first illustration is perfect for a beginner. Cheers mate.
@Dave: Thank you for the kind words! Running the site is a lot of fun.
@Tyler: Thanks for the feedback — I was very surprised that this relationship between formulas we
learned in Geometry wasn‘t shown until much later. Appreciate the comment.
again plase
great post
i have had these math courses in high school algebra 1,2 and geometry and in college i had stats and
physics. i would like to start over so i can build on a strong foundation and eventually get to calc and
other higher maths with the desire to career change from social services to perhaps actuarial science
fields or strategic management. any suggestions as to where to begin again and what books can u
@Bryan: That‘s great about revisiting. Unfortunately I don‘t have any specific book recommendations,
http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-develop-a-mindset-for-math/
In general I would suggest always looking for the ―big picture‖ behind the concepts as they are
presented. And always look for another explanation if the one in the book doesn‘t make sense.
ahh great job mister, i wonder what you‘re doin though..are you a scientist or sth?
friends .
Hi anh. Just finished reading this article. Really awesome!! I really like the ―big pictures‖ that you put
side-by-side together. Math sounds much more interesting the way you see it. I really wish I was
taught by you in my previous math classes (or at least become my cute tutor). hee hee. And you‘re so
right about the the velocity equation (I had to wiki it). I am similar to #2, where I get very intrigued
by the root/origin of something rather than the nitty-gritty details (essential, yet… difficult to grasp).
PS remind me to give you a relaxing massage whenever you write another article =)
This is one of the best readings I have done on Calculus in a long long time. I used to enjoy doing
calculus when I was in college…now I have a son who is in 10th grade and hates math. I just wanted
to find out if there was a better way of getting him to understand the beauty of calculus….and your
page is brilliant. Thank you very much for making this page!
The ‗aha‘ value I got from seeing the Area of a circle derived…I wish you were my teacher when I was
As soon as you said unroll the rings I got it, fucking brilliant!
Amazing post.
Another great article – keep on changing the world one article at a time.
And great points about motivation. Reminds me of my high school physics class…one of the times I
was most motivated was when I was trying to calculate Michael Jordan‘s hang time when dunking
from the free throw line. The interest in the subject comes first, the learning second.
@Sreenath: You‘re welcome, I‘m really happy you were able to find the page useful and share it with
your son. It‘s never too late to tinker around with numbers .
@Victor: Thanks.
@Hang Time: Heh, I‘ll do what I can in my little corner of the ‗net. I completely agree — you can only
push a rock uphill so long, when there‘s interest the learning comes easily.
Brilliant!
I was just perusing Google for a quick refresher on elementary Calculus and this article came up.
Never before have I heard such a clear and concise explanation of the fundamentals… I seriously could
have saved hours of hair-pulling in university had I had access to this article years ago.
@Steve: Thanks for the kind words and encouragement! I was in the same boat — it was years after I
―learned‖ Calculus until I started seeing what it was really about. And I‘m still finding out .
―Unroll the rings‖. This single picture if shown to students of Calculus would set off a lot of light bulbs.
more motivation.
@aleemb: Thanks, really glad it clicked for you! Yes, it‘s funny how a complex idea can just be
I recently read your article on calculus and it was amazing . Hats Off to you . While I was reading a
book on Sir Issac Newton I found out about calculus . I wanted to learn about it so the very next day
searched for it on the net and I got it .Also could you send me the url of the sites where one can learn
calculus .
Amazing…Thank you
Thanks again
try this book.It has clear explanations of basics – ―idiots guide to calculus‖.
A little more than thirty years ago I won an award at my high school for being the top math student. A
couple of years later, I abandoned the study of mathematics. You see, I could make good grades in
my Calc classes, but I had absolutely no idea why I was memorizing how to do it. It was no fun
anymore.
My 77 year old father has cancer, but he has always been my inspiration in science and math. He is
one of the minority scientists who disputes a ―big bang‖ origin of the universe. (Basically, there is no
expansion of the universe, only local contraction as a result of the constant and continual creation of
energy, resulting in the gravity phenomenon.) To fully understand what he is trying to tell me, I need
to understand calculus. By that, I mean that I don‘t need to know how to do calculus, I need to see
what it is about. I won‘t have my dad for much longer, so an article like this is invaluable for someone
like me.
One final comment: There is no science of ―intelligent design‖ unless its proponents are willing to
I am here in this blog for about 2 hours, moving post to post. I am just loving it. This is something i
Respect to Khalid
Hey it‘s a really cool article. Im currently doing my masters in regenerative medicine but my interest
in Nanotechnology leaves me no choice to know this subject of calculus. Could you please let me know
how should I go about it in detail and also about articles that are as visually appealing as yours so that
i can easily understand rather enjoy the subject. Superb work by you.
I was googling ―learning calculus‖, seeing as how I‘ve also been quite the frustrated math student. I
took BC calc my senior year of high school and absolutely hated the way it was taught. The book used
was simply terrible, as other users on amazon would attest to that as well. It skipped out on all the
insightful moments leaving that solely to the reader and focused instead on equations and a ―semi-
formal‖ approach to proofs. I‘m starting college this fall and need to seriously brush up on my calculus
Your article was quite insightful and what I needed, thank you!
@Shashank: Thanks! Dr. Math has some very good discussions on math that may help.
@wolfizzi: Wow, I‘m happy the article was able to help you in this way. And I agree — if a theory can‘t
@Sumit: I don‘t have any detailed advice; if you need to learn calculus for a course a professor &
book are probably your best bet. I‘ll have a series of articles which should help provide some intuitive
@Chris: Thanks!
Appreciate your intent Kalid but fail to see what these commenters are rhapsodizing about,you‘ve
taken 1600 words to convey a simple geometry lesson,even the crux of it was too
@Mike: If you haven‘t been taught calculus in a rote, dull manner, this post may not resonate as
much for you. Unfortunately, many calculus introductions jump into definitions and symbol
manipulation, without shedding light into the bigger picture of what calculus is for. As a result,
students get discouraged, and only see the underlying themes if they happen to stick with the subject
For the circle/triangle example, it‘s just tangible example of calculus in action. Sure, you can solve it
using pure geometry, but calculus gives you a step-by-step method that uses formulas to get to the
same result. Finding the surface area of a sphere using geometry alone would be pretty challenging,
You might have several ―one-off‖ geometric proofs, each with their own quirks, but calculus can
directly show how the various formulas are related and variations of the same theme. I haven‘t seen
many calculus introductions discussing this use of calculus, which is one reason I made the intro.
WOW! THIS IS BRILLIANT, I LOVE THIS ARTICLE OF YOURS… I MEAN THE EXPRESSIONAS,
ILLUSTRATONS AND ALL I CAN SAY IS BRAVO! I‘VE ALWAYS TRIED TO BUILD-UP MY SELF IN THIS
ASPECT BUT WHERE I HAVE PROBLEMS IS THE APPLICATION… HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I
MEAN, I‘LL REALLY LOVE TO CONTINUE. PLEASE HOW CAN YOU PROCEED THIS YOUR LECTURE TO
total area that the circle had. If you actually stripped-out a 4-sided segment you would have to
incorporate equations involving subtracting the radius of 1 concentric circle from another or
something.
I didn‘t read all the way to the bottom, so sorry if i‘m offering something that has been said.
both creationism and evolution receive equal arguments in your article. one would have to be very
sensitive and polarized to extract bias from your writing (regarding evolution/creationism).
I don‘t really believe in God, but I don‘t not believe in God. Maybe I should write ―god‖.
Idk, i thought i would let you know how I feel about the accusations of subtle religious bias.
I‘m 13, and I think this article was amazing. I read ―A mathematician‘s Lament‖ when it was on
slashdot a few months ago and until now I think that was the greatest mathematical paper I‘ve ever
read. I‘ve only found this site a few minutes ago, but the explanations are so clear and elegant. I love
the evolution analogy. I think you might be like the second feynman or something.
@Kevin: Thanks for the kind words! I really like that paper as well . I‘m a huge fan of Feynman, I
love reading/listening to the way he explains things, he‘s an inspiration for me. Thanks again for the
comment!
Last but by no means least, I‘m sure I speak for most people here when I say that you come across -
@Ron: Thank you for the wonderful comment! It really means a lot, my goal is to write things as if I
were just having a fun chat about them, just person to person. I‘m happy that is coming through .
Wow! I must admit that I am very bad at maths. But after coming here and looking the enthusiasm
and the way it is shown here I don‘t think maths is a boring subject at all! Now I need a miracle to
pass this year. But I‘m sure I‘ll give it my best! Thanks a million yaar! I always knew maths as a
@Wilshire: You‘re welcome! Really glad you‘re starting to enjoy math again .
Hi Kalid!
I was really surprised, how similar your article to my thoughts. Because of education, I always realize
A few weeks ago I was thinking on the relation between a function and it‘s derivative function. And
when I realized how they logically relate to each other, how the derivative function describes the
original, I had the same dual feeling as you; calculus is beautiful, and it is really sad, that students
have to realize it by themselves. Teachers prove things by 2 whiteboard long equations, instead of
explaining things from the scratch – the path how to ―find out‖ things for ourselves.
It seems teachers want us to learn, not to understand. But I think people forget things fast if they
I‘m really happy that there are more people out there who see things like this.
(I wonder if this way of thinking is somewhat related to the fact that we‘re both interested in
programming )
but i have thought of another way of finding area of circle assuming 2*pi*r is the circumference.
If we take r to be 100. then we can have hundred circles of radius going from 1 to 100.
now if we consider their circumference to be part of area of bigger circle except the last circle of radius
=2*pi*(1+2+…r)
=2*pi*r*(r+1)/2
=pi*r2 + pi*r (we can discount pi*r for being circumference of the biggest circle).
It‘s just another attempt towards thinking abstract. hope i‘m close.
Thanks
The slideshow really helped and can you tell me how negative numbers cancel each other out?
Because I read your post on imaginary but don‘t understand how (-3)x(-3)=9 Until someone told me
@Seamus: Glad the slideshow helped, I was very happy for the contribution. For negative numbers, I
consider -3 to be a shortcut for 3 * -1, which means ―Take 3, and then flip it‖".
So -3 * -3 means to me 3 * -1 * 3 * -1 which is ―take 3, flip it, make it 3x larger, flip it again‖ … the
two flips cancel each other out in that case. I like to visualize numbers like that, but other people may
good luck with the sphere. Doesn‘t work very easily with geometry, does it?
Thank you for this and many other great articles. I am currently learning Pre-Engineer Math and
Physics in a 5 month course. It is incredibly difficult because I start from scratch. It feels a lot like I
am being taught to be a robot feeding numbers into mysterious equations. Your writings really help
me see the meaning and beauty behind it all. I like learning but not without understanding. You help
me understand Math the same way reading Feynman helps me understand Physics. Thanks!
@Ketil: Thanks for the note! I completely know what you mean about the robot being fed numbers —
it‘s just so frustrating not understanding _why_ something is happening. I love Feynman‘s level of
Hi Kalid……..beautiful article..
I study in Class 10 and I don‘t have to learn calculus but I guess the beauty in the name ―Calculus‖
and my curiosity took me deeper. And u have helped me a lot in understanding it.
Your method of deriving the area of a circle from its circumference is cooool. It inspired me to derive
the volume of a sphere from its surface area. Doing it the same way as you did, we get a cone whose
This article is absolute genius as opposed to the contrived genius that pen math text books.
True genius is the ability to explain PhD level stuff to a 10 year old. Contrived genius is the ability of a
@Shory: Thanks, glad you liked it! Yes, a huge part of teaching is just trying to explain without
getting your ego in the way. It‘s not about you, it‘s about whether you can develop an idea in
Amazing explanation. Very lucid . If maths is taught like this then 90% of students who are scared
about maths and its formulas will grow aa interest towards it. I wuld like to go through some more
Explicate bellemente!!!
Yesterday, I accidentally saw one of your articles and have kept reading your posts. And I feel so
lucky to find your site and am excited to teach my son sometime later.
@Jang: Awesome, thanks for the encouragement! Glad you were able to browse around .
The calculus the differential & Intregal both are tough, this page does not answer the question how to
want to go out and buy pipe cleaners…and probably some finger paints too
I have been thinking of doing a course that involves alot of mathe matics of late but i have never been
good in it. but now after looking at your definations, i know am going to change my thinking and just
go for it.
Arrg!!! I want to learn calculus, but I‘m still in eighth grade learning algebra!!!!!!! Grrrrr!
@Bron: Don‘t worry, once you learn algebra, calculus will be there for you .
God bless you! Or Nature bless you! Or fate bless you! Or whatever…..
Thanks!!
148. Kalid on October 27, 2010 at 3:23 pm said:
@Taneja: Thanks!
This article is very helpful, but I‘m still having a hard time with deciphering intermediate forms. Could
@Wolf: Thanks for the comment — that‘d be a great topic for an upcoming article.
awesome!!!!!!!!!!
I have a question. In the triangle, I can see why 2*pi*r is the height but can you better explain to me
@JF: Great question. There‘s a visual and algebraic way to look at it, let‘s look at the visual way first.
If you have the triangle (made of some gummy substance) and want to roll it into a circle, how thick
should the bottom be? Well, if the very bottom doesn‘t bend at all, then it should be as thick as the
radius. I imagine the straight edge of the triangle, with radius 2*pi*r, being able to bend perfectly into
a ring of radius r (after all, a ring of radius r can be unbent into a straight line of height 2*pi*r,
right?). So, my visual interpretation is ―the triangle needs to be large enough to account for the very
Here‘s a more algebraic way to see it: every point on the circle needs to be ―covered‖ by a matching
point on the triangle (they are the same shape after all, just bent, right?).
Well, every point on the circle can be described using two coordinates: 1) how far from the center are
For example, the very edge of the circle on the right side is ―distance = r (the full distance), angle =
0″. The very top of the circle is ―distance = r (full distance), angle = 90 degrees‖. The very middle of
If we draw a ring on the circle, we keep a certain distance (like distance = half the radius) and take
every angle we can, 0 to 360. This ends up being a straight line on the triangle — go out some
distance, and draw a line up as far as we can. The length of the line varies, though — the further away
we get, the more we have to travel to get the full ―0 to 360″ coverage.
But, the key is that we need to go out the full ―r‖ in order to have lines on the triangle that match up
@JF: I forgot that I had color coded the lines. To make it more clear:
In the circle, we have the largest ring being dark blue. On the triangle, where should this shop up?
Well, the radius of the largest ring is 2 * pi * r, and it is at distance ―r‖ from the center of the circle.
Thus, there needs to be some part of the triangle which as height 2 * pi * r (and there is — the blue
strip). There aren‘t any more rings after the blue one, so we can stop building the triangle there.
A giant caveat is that we‘re ignoring the thickness of the ring — a bit like how we ignore the thickness
It looks like you only ―unrolled‖ half the sphere from the middle up – what about the other half?
Where have I got it wrong?
Thnx
Thank you for an excellent article. I just started Calculus I and have been nothing but frustrated by
exactly what you describe here. I am very good at problem solving, especially physical, mechanical
type problems and for many years made my living as a ship‘s engineer where I did nothing but repair,
maintain and implement all sorts of machinery and electro-mechanical systems. I am also good at
math… but the approach to calculus (that I have experienced so far) is to basically leave out all of the
information necessary to solve a problem and to focus on one small step of the process that has been
emptied of all of it‘s meaning. The student has no way of knowing if s/he is proceeding in the right
direction or even what it is that s/he is trying to figure out. It is maddening!!! I explained this
approach to a friend of mine as trying to learn a foreign language, but not being taught the meaning
or translation of any of the new, foreign words. The student is expected to simply just memorize the
sounds that have been detached from any kind of meaning and become proficient at making those
sounds… and then after a few years of ―learning‖ this way the meaning of the words is slowly revealed
(if the student has not already forgotten 95% of the meaningless sounds that they ―learned‖). Your
fingerpainting analogy is even more succinct. It is encouraging to see that I was not mistaken when I
perceived Calculus as a simple form of problem solving that has been made extremely difficult (almost
unapproachable)by the standard, backwards approach that is presented by most textbooks and
professors. Are there any other good sources for learning Calculus from the intuitive point of view that
I can reference as I try to make sense of the garbage they are force feeding me in this class? Thanks
I stumbled upon this in a desperate search to understand what was going on in my Calc I class.
It‘s my dream to become a doctor and the only thing seemingly standing in the way is my long-
standing difficulty with higher level math. Yet in 20 minutes with just this page, I not only understood
something that looked completely foreign to me, but actually enjoyed it. Who‘d have thought it?
@Mike: Wow, thanks for the note! What you say about the process really rings too — it‘s so
frustrating to go through math as a series of mindless steps without knowing *why* we‘re doing what
we‘re doing. I fear that many people don‘t realize how much more there is, but get discouraged and
just go through the rote memorization to get through the class (and never touch the topic again).
I haven‘t looked deep enough at other Calculus resources but I like this book:
http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html
It teaches calculus using the techniques that its inventors used, not the mathematicians who made it
If my AB calculus class was half as good as this, I swear to god I‘d know calculus in an afternoon.
People talk about how oil‘s a limited resource. People talk about how money is a limited resource.
Thank you for proving as definitively as ever that the only limited resource is human intelligence, and
the creativity to do a little critical thinking and generate something as lucid and sensible as this site.
@Tomer: The triangle is only ―r‖ wide because an individual ring goes all the way around the circle
and is counted on both sides. For example, looking at the outermost ring (in blue), you can see that it
starts at position ―r‖ away from the middle but can loop all the way around. Its height is 2*pi*r. I
should make a quick video with pipe cleaners to show what I mean .
@Wolfy: Thanks! Good luck with your class . It‘s funny, I think most mathematical subjects can be
@Anonymous: Thank you! I deeply believe that it‘s not technology or money which is holding back
education — it‘s simple, heartfelt explanations and an encouraging attitude which actually help us
The only thing that threw me is, how do you know the unrolled rings will create a straight lined
Ummm, I‘m in 8th grade (taking 9th grade math) so can someone introduce calculus for my grade
@Ken: Great question. Intuitively, I see the rings as being very, very thin lines. Then the question
becomes ―Should the lines get larger at the same rate?‖. i.e., should there be a smooth, straight line
Well, the lines come from 2*pi*r — that is, the length of each line is the circumference at that radius
We can see as the radius increases smoothly (2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3) then the circumference should increase
in that same progression (2*pi*2.1, 2*pi*2.2, 2*pi*2.3, and so on). Basically, because the
circumference is directly proportional to the radius, as the radius increases in a straight line (from 0 to
the full radius), the circumference should increase also. Hope this helps!
@Joe: I have another post in the works which takes another approach to introducing calculus. Should
this made me make it 1 step closer to being as good as my dad he confuses every one with calculus
hes a genius and hes mabye the smartest guy at calculus in the world and im only
10!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
volume. Only this time it‘s like peeling a layer off an onion and stacking up the peelings. Then to get
the volume, find the volume of this stack of peelings using the formula for a pyramid. This means you
do 1/3 * r * surfaceArea for the 3d case. Infact as long as you know the radius of the largest sphere
you can fit in a shape and the perimiter/surface area of that shape, you can use this method to find
I totally agree with the way math is taught makes students say that math doesn‘t relate to the real
world. Our educational system just focuses on memorization and not real thinking or problem solving,
because that is what they test on. As a result we are now proving just how much our students have
been taught that they really DON‖T know how to think for themselves or solve problems. We‘ve all
learned exactly what the system has taught us – Just to follow directions and do without thinking. It is
Your visual explanation of the circle to triangle was beautiful. It was a huge moment of clarity for me.
I would love more of this for calculus. I took it and passed many, many years ago and do not
remember much. Your article just makes me know I could understand the meaning of what I had
memorized long ago and since forgot. If I could read more of this, I know it would give meaning and
I noticed how long ago this was posted. Do you have any other articles on calculus with other visuals
to explain concepts? I‘ve noted that it was commented that this was actually a visual for integrals.
Some have commented that derivatives were simple to understand. Well, for one who still needs more
visuals, can you provide either more comments or point me to another article that will help me to see
how simple they are too? I need to understand what they really mean. I know it relates to looking at
the slope at a given point on the curve. But I feel like I need more substance. How does that help? Or
relate? It makes me want to say, so what? What do I do with that now? Can you help? Thank you.
Hi!
and the final rectangle don‘t have the same area. This put an extra difficulty in your visual proof.
http://www.matematicasvisuales.com/english/html/history/kepler/keplercircle.html
http://www.uff.br/cdme/dsp/dsp-html/dsp-ac-br.html
Absolutely Brilliant…After a long time I reread this article and its just as its whats needed to be done
in any teaching.Your way of explaining is like breathing fresh air. Keep up the good work.
―Awesome‖
@Humberto: Thanks for the note! I‘m not clear that the transformation deforms area, but I suppose
Cool article I love the way you explain the relationship between the circle and triangle area ,wish more
After twenty years i still groan at doing calculus for a new course and I am doing one now with a lot of
vector based calculus for Electromagnetism ,surfaces Gausses Theorem, Gaussian surfaces ,your
may I recommend a book to your readers which although old is freely available and makes calculus
simple for simple minded folk like me .
The title is ―Project Gutenberg‘s Calculus Made Easy, by Silvanus Phillips Thompson ―
Details:
Language: English
should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool
are mostly clever fools—seldom take the trouble to show you how easy
myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the
parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will
Powerful stuff . I am reading your articles with great interest , thanks for sharing.
@Rupe: Thanks for the wonderful comment! That‘s a great quote, sometimes math is made more
Re: your nested rings exercise proving area of circle formula… either I don‘t get it or it is truly illogical.
The concentric rings in your example have a conveniet thickness. Instead, let those thickness be close
to zero. Or a mile thick and in both cases the answers pertaIn not at all. What am i
@Tom: Great question! The key idea is that instead of measuring a wiggling shape directly, we break
http://betterexplained.com/articles/why-do-we-need-limits-and-infinitesimals/
The key is the finer-grained our measurements (mini-shapes), the closer we match the real shape. So,
You‘ve hit the heart of calculus with ―close to zero‖ though. The idea is to make measurements so
fine, so close to zero, that we can‘t tell it apart from the original. (This happens all the time, by the
way… we watch movies and think we‘re seeing fluid motion, but it‘s 24 frames per second. We don‘t
need perfectly fluid motion, we just need something ―good enough‖ that we can‘t tell the difference).
Calculus is about finding that threshold for ―good enough‖ where there‘s no detectable mathematical
difference from the real thing. In this case, Calculus tells us there‘s no detectable difference between
the unrolled circle and the triangle. (There are much more formal ways to state this, but it‘s how I
I am going to Start teaching Calculas to my my first student. He is just 2 yeas younger than me and I
am thinking how to show him that differentiation is just the opposite of integration. But how to show
that slope calculation is the opposite of calculating the area under the same curve? I will post as soon
@mitrajyoti: Thanks for the kind words! I‘m working on an analogy for differentiation too — I think I‘d
like to avoid explicit mention of slope (at first) just because it‘s another concept to learn. I don‘t think
people are super-comfortable (intuitively) with graphs, so using this as a building block might be
tricky. But you never know, if you find an analogy that works, use it! (and share!)
Kalid, your approach is refreshing and enlightening! The way Calculus is taught is wrong, wrong,
wrong. My lawyer says I need your permission before tattooing the entire ―A Note on Rigor‖ paragraph
on my back.
@Peter: Thanks for the note! Hah, I don‘t have any tattoos but a tirade in favor of intuitive math
This all seems so easy, over night i decided to brush up on algebra and it took less then an hour to
remember everything, afterwards i decided hell i will take a crack at calculus, after reviewing only 3
pages and about 2 hours of writing things down i find myself stuck… what else is there, i get the
concept of familiarity to algebra and using the concept to solve equations from calculus, but what i
don‘t get is what now… i feel i must be missing something so i am now looking at physics which seems
to be using calculus to make up things about physical aspects. if any ones has any advise where i can
look further about calculus and math in general to further expand my curiosity please let me know.
one thought i wanted to work on is my idea for the ever expanding universe, but not in an explosion
but in multiple explosions that further expand the universe more and more, and pushing the universe
further and further and all of its matter threw a very delicate process of gravity+force… best way to
describe would be taking a pebble and dropping it in a pond and watching it ripple…. again just doing
this all for fun but would love to try and test this theory with math
i guess what i am trying to say with this is that force; eg. explosions have gravity and explosions
would also die out over time, so depending on how much force is in the explosion there could very
well be gravity or some other force constructed by this explosion, thus would be causing the universe
to act like a ripple and would send galaxy‘s and other things in space in an up and down motion while
expanding… again this is just a thought i had and would like to work on it
well if anyone can give me any tips on how to move forward my email is ranmalrac@yahoo
Thanks for a wonderful and well-written article! As both a college student and a math tutor, I have
I don‘t normally read the comments, but this time I was curious to see what others thought of the
evolution-calculus parallel. And after reading the comments, I could not resist putting in my own two
cents.
1) The end result of evolution is to render God superfluous. Religion is defined (according to the
Oxford dictionary) as ―the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a
personal God or gods.‖ Evolutionists maintain that their conclusions are purely scientific, but their
conclusions are premised on the belief that God does not exist, or at the very least, was not vital to
the creation of the universe. However, I do not have a problem with mixing science and religion. To
my mind they are inseparable, for religion is the lens through which we interpret the world.
2) I find it very interesting that the ―fathers of calculus‖ (Newton and Leibniz) both believed God had
―In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain
―Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God
governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.‖ – Newton
How peculiar that two men who were so ―wrong‖ about a subject as crucial as the origin of the
―In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize,
there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me
you have no idea the ―aha‖ moment I had just reading this 1 article. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK
YOU. T
Great article!
I struggled with calculus until a class in Statistics, all of a sudden the area under the curve made
sense.
Learning computer programming simplifies this entirely. Take a for-loop, all this is is integration from
one value to another. Calculating the area under the curve is exceedingly easy when plugging the
@Scott: Thanks! I hadn‘t thought of the programming for loop, but that‘s a great analogy!
WOW! er a-ha
never took trig or calculus in high school because the theoms and postulates (spelling?) really turned
me off. I loved and still do love physics, but was so discouraged by memorization of formulas without
any practical examples, that i could not continue. that was 30 years ago, and i can honestly say that if
I had had an instructor/professor that explained it like you did my life would be completely different.
the first time i was ever told what pi is, and how it was/is derived makes it so easy. Thank you
@Don: Thanks for the note, I‘m really happy it helped! One of my biggest insights was that once you
get over the frustration, learning can become truly, genuinely enjoyable. So much education is
focused on memorization because that‘s the easiest thing to measure (and usually the first thing we
So im only in grade 8 but i really wanna know calculus because i hate when people know it and it
makes me feel dumb. This page has sorta helped me understand it but i still want to know how to do
an equation that someone gives me. My math teacher teaches all levels of math from 10-2 to calculus
and he teaches me 10-2 now so im ready because i asked him for help but its still hard to understand
By Page 2 I was laughing my head off, then crying with joy. I have begun the understanding of
calculus. God knows how long it will take me to get through the rest of the pages but I am expecting
race in math, we learn what we can as we can (just like there‘s no race to read every book). Really
THANK YOU! i‘ve always been a bit disappointed that maths (at pre-uni and uni level) never seems to
be intuitive to me the way it was when i was a kid. i still occasionally get an ‗aha!‘ moment, and it‘s
the greatest feeling when i do, but it‘s often after months (or years) of using them to calculate things
without really understanding. (the point in implicit differentiation when you could separate dx and dy
was a complete shock to me, i thought it was like splitting sin into si * n or something).
I had my aha! moment for what dy/dx really means probably over a year after i started using it, when
i noticed the slope of a straight line was just the differential which was just difference in y/ difference
in x and the one for integration was only a couple of months ago (over two years since i learnt it).
@rash: Awesome! Glad it was helpful . I totally know what you mean, I love the excitement of
having a tough idea finally click. That‘s a good point about separating dy/dx into ―dy‖ and ―dx‖ — in
physics you are allowed to, but in ―rigorous‖ math you aren‘t (as you say, it‘d be like separating sin
into s*in)! But the intuition comes when you can separate the ideas and play with them a bit. I‘d like
WoW! This is an exceptionally ―cool‖ way of looking at this subject that is typically considered lack-
luster and dry. If more kids could be exposed to this article alone I‘m sure they would be given hope
@Marvin: Thanks (and please don‘t go home). I find anything can be fascinating if presented properly!
199. Bill on December 21, 2011 at 9:10 am said:
Hi, I like the idea. I don‘t know if you are familiar with tau (tauday.com) but it is a good way to
introduce new people to the concepts being discussed without an errant factor of 2 in there (or a 1/2
@Bill: Thanks, I like tau as well. It helps people break away from a memorized formula and think
good work, i was thinking about calculus, it is very interesting subject to learn, but my book defines
―A f(x) is said to be continuous at a point x=c in its domain if for a given Є > 0, there exists δ > 0,
that i was totally confused, although i understood the concept of continuity from its graph but just
cant understand this definition. they fill so many bloody greek symbols in them that it becomes so
complicated.
@Husam: Yes, unfortunately the definitions we see in math books are ones that have been refined
over thousands of years to the most precise possible. It‘s like describing a cat using its DNA sequence
instead of saying ―it‘s a 4-legged animal with whiskers and a tail.‖ The DNA sequence is more
Valuable info. Lucky me I discovered your web site unintentionally, and I am stunned why this
again plase
Mr. Azad, Do you plan to teach, or are you teaching now, a complete course on Calculus that follows
the illustrative method you use above? If so, please let me know as I would very much like to take
such a course. Also, let me know what the cost would be for such a course. I am anxious to start.
Please advise.
Jim
@Jim: Thank you for the comment! I‘d love to make a calculus course once I have enough material
available — this year I‘m planning on cranking up the calculus content so hopefully it will be available
sometime in the near future. Most likely, it will focus on developing intuition and using other online
courseware (Khan Academy, MIT Open courseware, etc.) for practice problems, etc. Thank you for the
encouragement though, I‘ll be putting together a mailing list for these future projects.
http://www.friesian.com/calculus.htm
@eaca: Glad you liked it, and thanks for the link — checking it out now .
Thank you!
Kalid – great site and great service to mankind ! on the same subject,taking the example of area of
circle. the rate of change area would be differentiation of PI*r^2 which is equal to 2PI*r. This
intuitively seems to make sense as every small change in radius will lead to increase in area by the
circumference we know that differentiation of x^2 is 2x ( I know the derivation using limits – X+h
etc). However, if we take real numbers say x=(2,3,4,5), x^2=(4,9,16,25). the change is 5(9-4 etc),
7,9,11). This is equal to 2x+1 and not 2x. What am i missing here?
@Sudharshan: Great question. You‘ll notice that the change between x and x^2 (2x + 1) is actually
dependent on the size of the change you are measuring. If you are jumping from 2^2 to 3^2, you
What about taking a smaller step, such as 2^2 to 2.1^2? We‘re only jumping to the number .1 in
front of us.
You‘ll see that the ―error term‖ is based on how far you step! In Calculus, we take tiny, microscopic
steps which means the error term is some microscopic amount squared (micro-microscopic). For small
steps, our error rate is shrinking faster than our step rate, and eventually becomes negligible.
The trick: to measure the difference from 2^2 to 3^2, don‘t jump all at once. Find the difference from
2^2 to 2.1^2, and 2.1^2 to 2.2^2, and so on… the error at each stage is (.1)^2 = .01, so after 10
So, jumping from 2 to 3 in steps of .1 gives a total error of .1. If we jumped in steps of .000001, we‘d
have a total error of .000001. At some point, we can make the steps small enough to be ―accurate
enough‖ for our needs (there‘s always some error threshold we can work within).
I plan on writing more about this!
Hey I have a question. Is it possible to integrate the volume of the sphere using the same method
only with a pyramid? I tried using r*2pir as the base of the the pyramid and pir^2 as the height, but
after applying the formula it doesn‘t seem to be working. Wikipedia went about deriving the volume of
a sphere on a completely different manner and when I differentiate the formula for the volume I get
the formula for the surface area of a sphere. What is the relation between these results? Is there a
way to continuously integrate the equations in order to make ―dimensional leaps‖ or better yet, to
express this in a geometrial manner? Because that would make calculating shapes above the third
i love calculus:)
1) Differentiating the volume formula and getting the surface area formula is a way of ―peeling‖ there
sphere layer-by-layer (similar to making a disc out of a bunch of rings, you can make a sphere out of
2) Getting the volume for the sphere by building it up is tricky. If you assume a ―flat line‖ curve for
the discs, you are actually building a cone [you might have come up with this formula].
In order to properly measure the discs, we use the pythagorean theorem to see h = sqrt(r^2 – w^2)
[where w is the width of the current disc and h is the height]. I need to do a follow-up, but you end up
seeing the top half of the sphere is 2/3 pi * r^3, the bottom half is the same, for a total of 4/3 pi *
r^3.
extremely difficult to even grasp what it was. After reading this, I actually feel that I would actually
like to learn a lot more into this as this gave me a really good view of what Calculus is. ―Algebra &
calculus are a problem-solving duo: calculus finds new equations, and algebra solves them.‖ well said!
The reason i luv calculus is dat‖it reveals us 2 mechanical engneering,in Thermodynamic courre.
I like what you said. I‘m a liberal arts person but has always found math fascinating. Two Weeks ago I
read an article on quantum entanglment and since then have been trying to figure out how to learn
more. In doing so I am now trying to re learn algebra, which I haven‘t really done for over 20 years.
This is exciting yet daunting especially since I am doing this on my own and not in a class. I do this so
that I can really understand what people are saying about entanglement, and well learning is always a
good thing. Thank you for describing it in a manner my liberal arts mind not only understood but
I‘ve ALWAYS struggled with calculus (math in general). This single article has taught me more (in
These are some wise words. The education system does try and crush my love for maths but this has
assisted to allow me to look past that and focus on the beauty of the subject. Thank you
Calculus is a very lovely subject….it is hazy in the beginning, but be patient….You will see how rigid
TIP: Ask questions and show curiosity till you understand everything…
If nature is programmed, how does your statement [Like evolution, calculus expands your
the CODE?
―. . . the anatomy of the eye‖ is a program found in a gene called The Master Eye Gene found by Dr.
Walter Gehring.
I had a terrible time with calculus at Parks College of St Louis University in early 1970s. Had to take
Calc 1 three times to pass, three times to pass Calc 2, never used any of it in the next 40 years. But I
feel to this day presentations were awful, full of theorems, not a bit of common sense real world
problems solved or real world applications shown. Probably half the students flunked out of Parks
College because of Calc. Reading your stuff tonight was a great refresher, and you have an excellent
knack of simple explanation. Thank you. I wish I had you as an instructor 40 years ago!
stuck in the same spot after the class, no intuition for the subject. Really happy things resonated with
you .
Good work Kalid!! I was already 200% into mathematics and now my interest grew 400% after
reading the article! You got a lot of lot of experience- that‘s for sure! Congratulations and keep up the
good work!
btw……are all the articles written by you? If yes, you are SUPERAWESOME and very very brainy!
Thanks…
http://betterexplained.com/articles/prehistoric-calculus-discovering-pi/
Pi is mysterious. Sure, you ―know‖ it‘s about 3.14159 because you read it in some book. But what if
you had no textbooks, no computers, and no calculus (egads!) — just your brain and a piece of paper.
Archimedes found pi to 99.9% accuracy 2000 years ago — without decimal points or even the number
zero! Even better, he devised techniques that became the foundations of calculus. I wish I learned his
Draw a circle with a steady hand, wrap it with string, and measure with your finest ruler.
Use door #3
Archimedes didn‘t know the circumference of a circle. But he didn‘t fret, and started with what he did
know: the perimeter of a square. (He actually used hexagons, but squares are easier to work with and
We don‘t know a circle‘s circumference, but for kicks let‘s draw it between two squares:
Neat — it‘s like a racetrack with inner and outer edges. Whatever the circumference is, it‘s somewhere
between the perimeters of the squares: more than the inside, less than the outside.
And since squares are, well, square, we find their perimeters easily:
We may not know where pi is, but that critter is scurrying between 2.8 and 4. Let‘s say it‘s halfway
between, or pi = 3.4.
guess so bad?
Squares are clunky. They don‘t match the circle well, and the gaps make for a loose, error-filled
calculation. But, increasing the sides (using the mythical octagon, perhaps) might give us a tighter fit
So, what‘s the perimeter of an octagon? I‘m not sure if I learned that formula. While we‘re at it, we
could use a 16-side-a-gon and a 32-do-decker for better guesses. What are their perimeters again?
Crickey, those are tough questions. Luckily, Archimedes used creative trigonometry to devise formulas
for the perimeter of shape when you double the number of sides:
Inside perimeter: One segment of the inside (such as the side of a square) is sin(x/2), where x is
the angle spanning a side. For example, one side of the inside square is sin(90/2) = sin(45) ~ .7. The
Outside perimeter: One segment of the outside is tan(x/2), where x is the angle spanning one side.
So, one segment of the outside perimeter is tan(45) = 1, for a total perimeter of 4.
Neat — we have a simple formula! Adding more sides makes the angle smaller:
But there‘s a problem: Archimedes didn‘t have a calculator with a ―sin‖ button! Instead, he used trig
These formulas just use arithmetic — no trig required. Since we started with known numbers like
sqrt(2) and 1, we can repeatedly apply this formula to increase the number of sides and get a better
By the way, those special means show up in strange places, don‘t they? I don‘t have a nice intuitive
grasp of the trig identities involved, so we‘ll save that battle for another day.
Starting with 4 sides (a square), we make our way to a better pi (download the spreadsheet):
Every round, we double the sides (4, 8, 16, 32, 64) and shrink the range where pi could be hiding.
After 3 steps (32 sides) we already have 99.9% accuracy. After 7 steps (512 sides) we have the
lauded ―five nines‖. And after 17 steps, or half a million sides, our guess for pi is as accurate as
Unfortunately, decimals hadn‘t been invented in 250 BC, let alone spreadsheets. So Archimedes had
to slave away with these formulas using fractions. He began with hexagons (6 sides) and continued
12, 24, 48, 96 until he‘d had enough (ever try to take a square root using fractions alone?). His final
The midpoint puts pi at 3.14185, which is over 99.9% accurate. Not too shabby!
(99.99999%) estimate of pi and was the best humanity had for nearly a millennium.
Some people use 22/7 for pi, but now you can chuckle ―Good grief, 22/7 is merely the upper bound
found by Archimedes 2000 years ago!‖ while adjusting your monocle. There‘s even better formulas out
there too.
Archimedes wasn‘t ―doing calculus‖ but he laid the groundwork for its development: start with a crude
We don’t know the answer, but we’ve got a guess. We had a guess for pi: somewhere
between 2.8 and 4. Calculus has many concepts such as Taylor Series to build a guess with
Let’s make our guess better. Archimedes discovered that adding sides made a better
estimate. There are numerical methods to refine a formula again and again. For example,
computers can start with a rough guess for the square root and make it better (faster than
You can run but not hide. We didn‘t know exactly where pi was, but trapped it between two
boundaries. As we tightened up the outside limits (pun intended), we knew pi was hiding
Pi is an unreachable ideal. Finding pi is a process that never ends. When we see it really
means ―You want perfection? That‘s nice — everyone wants something. Just start cranking
I‘ll say it again: Good enough is good enough. A shape with 96 sides was accurate enough for
The idea that ―close counts‖ is weird — shouldn‘t math be precise? Math is a model to describe the
world. Our equations don‘t need to be razor-sharp if the universe and our instruments are fuzzy.
Life Lessons
Even math can have life lessons hidden inside. Sometimes the best is the enemy of the good.
Perfectionism (―I need the exact value of pi!‖) can impede finding good, usable results.
Whether making estimates or writing software, perhaps you can start with a rough version and
improve it over time, without fretting about the perfect model (it worked for Archimedes!). Most of
the accuracy may come from the initial stages, and future refinements may be a lot of work for little
Ironically, the ―crude‖ techniques seen here led to calculus, which in turn led to better formulas for pi.
Math Lessons
Calculus often lacks an intuitive grounding — we can count apples to test arithmetic, but it‘s hard to
Archimedes‘ discovery of pi is a vivid, concrete example for our toolbox. Just like geometry refines our
intuition about lines and angles, calculus defines the rules about equations that get better over time.
Examples like this help use intuition as a starting point, instead of learning new ideas in a vacuum.
Later, we‘ll discuss what it means for numbers to be ―close enough‖. Just remember that 96 sides was
good enough for Archimedes, and half a million sides is good enough for Excel. We‘ve all got our
limits.
10. How To Understand Derivatives: The Quotient Rule, Exponents, and Logarithms
Let's create a living reference for how best to understand this topic.
Q: How exactly can the circumference of a circle be an irrational number? (More...) 2❤7
I haven't completed Algebra 2 yet, so I'm probably missing something, but the measurement of
the circumference of a circle is a finite quantity, isn't it? How can it be irrational?
Kalid
Great question. Intuitively, I don't have a great answer. Here's where my head is at:
A circle is a shape with infinite sides -- so we've never created a perfect one (even a drawn
I looked on Wikipedia and there are some proofs that pi is irrational... and they didn't come till
the 18th century! So it took a long, long time to figure out that pi wasn't rational.
In my head, pi (and e) are the result of continually changing processes, which help me
understand why they could be irrational (we can't assign a set number of sides to a circle, or a
(If it helps, the square root of 2 is irrational, and it's just the diagonal of a 1x1 square. It
Joe
Also, irrational numbers still count as 'finite.' They have an infinite number of decimal places,
yes, but are still perfectly normal numbers...we just can't write them 'exactly' in decimal form.
The Pythagoreans, who took their math seriously in a religious manner, didn't believe in
irrational numbers, and legend has it they excommunicated/drowned a student who proved the
irrationality of the square root of 2. Probably not true, but a little bit of colorful history never
hurts.
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myself on english not as I want, but as I can. I will try to express my opinion on the best
possible way. It is a true that our science becomes materialistic and I studied electrical
engineering on that way, never thinking about spiritual way of what I learned untill one day,
when I figured out something about the numbers and I find the open book in front of myself
Squering the circle means to know how to generate number pi, how to generate its next digit,
and not only that. Squering the circle means also to be able to measure how long some curve
line is. To measure curve line - it means you have to compare it with some streight line, but it
is hard to fit them, isn't it? So, squering the circle is the same as comparing curve line and
streight line and finding their corelation... as comparing soul and body and find the corelation...
as comparing man and woman and find the corelation...as comparering good and evel and find
the corelation. Please watch the numbers - 012345678910 - but only as a forms.curve- 0,
combination - 6, streight lines - 7, curves - 8, combination - 9, streight line -1, curve - 0.Some
of them are extremes (only curve or only streight lines) some of them are balance
(combination). Each number has its own pair 01, 25, 34, 69, 78, 10 complicated as much as it
is, but on some way opposite. Now place them in the number pi...as you go more and more
discovering number pi as a multiform you actualy know more about each its digit, about
extremes and about balance. As long you go from digit to digit of the number pi you will find
out - at start was circle, at the end is circle - conection between these two is long, narrow and
unsecure path very few people are following on the right way these days, holding faith in their
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You ought to publish your work here. I was scouring for Calculus books that took a more
intuitive approach to the subject and found nothing. This is the closest that I could find.
Calculus really makes a great deal of sense and I don't understand why the classroom makes it
Wow, thanks Kim! I'd like to make a calculus book, appreciate the encouragement :).
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Very good. Your philosophy is sound and concern for the beauty of the calculus inspiring. 1
❤1
kalid
Thank you!
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Great post. I really liked the formatting too, and the calculator at the end. Worthwhile talk about how
you might estimate pi in other ways, such as estimating the number co-prime numbers, or the Buffon
Needle problem.
Matt
I like the article, and will definitely use the ideas in my classes, but first there is a minor problem to
solve. You have the inside perimeter as the geometric mean of the previous estimates, and the
outside perimeter as the harmonic mean. The problem is, the harmonic mean is always /smaller/ than
the geometric mean. Maybe they just switch, but I don‘t see how yet.
The page to which you link contains the same mistake. I have no idea where that guy got the trig
Update: Okay, I now see I was reading the formulae incorrectly (one refers to newIn rather than
Inside), but the formulae themselves are wrong as well (on your page; the page you link to gets them
and
In my email to you about writing a guest article, I had one that this article just destroys. I talked (a
The comment form just ate my last comment; I have no idea why that is.
223/71
In my email to you about writing a guest article, I had one that this article just destroys. I talked (a
lot) about Archimedes‘ discovery that 223/71 is less than pi which is less than 22/7, though I focused
Although, your square root comment made me think: I have a better explanation for Newton‘s method
than you had in the Quake Square Root article, so maybe I should write about that…
@Matt: Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Those are great suggestions, I think it‘d be great for a follow-up.
I didn‘t want to distract from the calculus roots too much in this post, but the needle approach is a fun
@Zac: No worries — I should probably install a live preview plugin so people will know when their
comment is getting eaten / mistaken for HTML. Sure, if you have ideas for the square root method
feel free to write them down — once the contribution wiki is up I‘m sure it‘ll be a nice addition .
hey nice one there for a quick look , although we know the value of pi after all those yrs of forced
insertion of the value into our heads, but this gives a better insight to the derivation in a way,
Thanks Brijesh! Yep, we know pi because we‘ve seen it before, but it‘s nice to see how we came to
that result.
>Whatever the circumference is, it‘s somewhere between the perimeters of the squares: more than
Why is it obvious that the outside square and futhermore 512-sided-thingy has bigger perimeter?
Reading a little more into pi and the ways of calculuating it seem to always lead me to Taylor Series.
Pi is a fun number. For some reason, I decided to memorize it to 50 decimal places. The fact that it‘s
impossible to calculate exactly just makes it even more fun to try and find more.
―PI‖is=3.1416.And if I‘m not wrong 22/7 is not a correct anwser.not even that 223/71.Also I found
and america you guys solve math problems outside down.My favorite subject is MATH,and II want
Dude the chinese made a much better version than Archimedes sooner. They made ones with roughly
@tekumse: That‘s an interesting question, sometimes it‘s good to break down these assumptions. The
formal name for the inside shape is ―inscribed‖ and the formal name for the outside shape is
―circumscribed‖.
The area of the inscribed shape is less than or equal to the area of the circle, since all points are inside
the boundary.
The area of the circumscribed shape is greater than or equal to the area of the circle, since all points
are outside the boundary. Therefore, the area of the inscribed polygon is less than or equal to the area
For similar shapes, the greater area corresponds to a greater side length (see the Pythagorean
theorem for more details). Since we are using similar shapes (squares, octagons, 16-gons, etc.) the
circumscribed shape will have a larger side length (and perimeter) than the inscribed one. Hope this
helps.
@Zac: Yep, the Taylor series will be fun. I want to think about it more to see if I can find some
insights that link it to everyday analogies . And 50 digits of pi is pretty precise, enough to estimate
@Cheeseburger: That‘s interesting, Archimedes made this technique famous but others may have
used it as well.
I have a question at the very first assumption in the two squares case:
How did you make the assumption (assuming precalculus and calculator days and all that) that
2.8
1/sqrt(2) comes from the Pythagorean theorem — it‘s actually sqrt(2)/2 (which is the same thing),
and sqrt(2) can be approximated using various algorithms: it‘s more than 1, less than 2. It‘s more
than 5/4 (5/4 squared = 25/16 which is less than 2), and less than 6/4 (6/4 squared is 36/16 which is
Not sure if that was the question but feel free to ask again, sorry about the form.
Hi phyu, 22/7 is an approximation for pi, but it isn‘t as accurate as 355/113. Check out the ―Cranking
the higher up in the fractions you go the farther from 7 the bottom number becomes, which falls right
Also @ Kalid very nice job in the compilation, always nice to see some interesting math facts!
such a great article! i was really happy that you included that little bit of life lesson at the end there. i
have a tattoo of pi to remind myself that life doesn‘t always make perfect sense :]
@Anna: Glad you enjoyed it! Don‘t think I‘ve ever met anyone with a pi tattoo but that‘s pretty
intriguing . Yep, I think math (or any subject) should enhance your outlook, not just teach facts.
Quite an enlightening article. The basics are all so clearly explained. Thank you very much.
Hi there. First of all, thanks for the article. I think I‘ve got a silly question., but it‘s driving me nuts!
My intuition keeps telling me that the inside perimeter (sin(x/2) above) and outside perimeter
(tan(x/2) above) should be the same equation – it‘s the same shape, just bigger, so the formula
formula, scaled by some amount. The tricky thing is to realize that x/2 (the angle) should be *the
same* in both cases; the angles don‘t change no matter what size square you have.
You want to start with a formula (call it f(x) ) and scale it by some amount, called C: f(x) and C * f(x).
Looking closer, this is what‘s happening: sin(x/2) is the basic formula, and tan(x/2) is really sin(x/2) /
cos(x/2).
Since cosine is between 0-1, the division will actually be a multiplication or scaling. So tan(x/2) is
Again, great question — sin(x/2) and tan(x/2) are really the same formula, but scaled by 1/cos(x/2).
Phew .
Great articles Kalid, any similar insights or an intuitive approach you could share on eulers identity ?
This explanation for pi is the one we were actually thought in school, and we were thought about e
through continuous growth. (as in the article on e on this site). Both make perfect sense to me but I‘m
still blown away by eulers identity ( e(i.pi)+1 = 0 ). What is the meaning of this relation between e, i
@enki: Whoops, sorry about the late response, think I missed this. There is an intuitive way to
approach Euler‘s identity that I‘d like to write about (the book Visual Complex Analysis has a take on
it, which I highly recommend). Basically, you can view it as a linkage between growth and rotation —
@Geo: Yep, that‘s the point at which the calculator can‘t tell the difference .
Great article. This is one of the reasons why I have heard the circle referred to as an ―infinigon.‖
n->infinity
i have derived it based on inscribing a polygon in circle. variable n represents number of sides of
polygon.
I don‘t understand why pi is an irrational number. Can‘t you just measure the circumference
accurately and then divide by the diameter – there you have a rational fraction. I can‘t see how a
@rishi: Great question. The problem with drawing and measuring a circle is that there‘s no such thing
as a perfect circle. Anything you draw is just a collection of points (each drop of ink, or each molecule
of ink!) and is therefore a very large polygon, maybe with billions of sides.
We can measure the circumference of this polygon, but it won‘t be ―pi‖, just a very close guess. After
all, we could have added more sides and got a better guess.
One way to see the irrational, neverending decimal is to consider pi the result of an infinite process
(adding more and more sides to a polygon to approximate a circle), one we can approximate but
I like the write-up very much, but find the title a little misleading.
You give a good description of applying Archimedes method of calculating the numerical value of pi. In
fact, this type of successive approximation is useful for computing many other interesting values as
well.
To many, however, the ―discovery of pi‖ is the realization that the ratio of circumference to diameter
is the same for ALL circles. Without that, we wouldn‘t be talking about the circumference of a unit
Adding an intuitive description of that discovery to your write-up would really make it shine.
@Eric: Great question! I think another article would be warranted for that general idea of proving that
http://school.maths.uwa.edu.au/~schultz/3M3/L6Euclid.html
The idea that the newOutside is the harmonic mean and the newInside is the geometric mean is not
very intuitive. Why is newOut being derived from the perimeter of the previous inside and previous
@Sapan: Yes, I struggle with that too — I don‘t have an intuitive understanding of why it would be the
geometric and harmonic mean to figure out those ratios. Right now my understanding is at the level of
I actually came up with Archimede‘s method on my own but I started with a triangle and kept going
with more polygons (basically each side of the triangle got another triangle, and so on). Basic
geometry got me from the perimeter of one poly to the next. Using my PC i was able to calculate pi to
a million decimal places rather quickly (i did a text-compare with one i found online and it was right). I
thought i may have stumbled on something new but later i found out it was not so.
The only interesting thing was that it was recursive and used only basic geometry (right triangles).
@Dedic: That‘s a cool story — there‘s always something to be said for the joy of discovery, even if you
I‘m actually a young guy and new to complex stuff but u make it look easy…..
A question :
line segments? A perfect circle seems never has two points on a perfect line (i.e. if you rotate the
circle only one of the points will be ―rightmost‖, you can‘t have both vertically above each other) but
Hi Kalid…….What i meant was that a road seems perfectly straight to us……..however its just a part of
So if we keep on extending a straight line on both sides infinitely, will we get a large circle ????
Maybe after the 100 billionth number after the decimal point, it may repeat itself, thus making it a
rational number……….
Dear Khalid,
Grate article and will look out for other article by you.
Regarding: PI ~= 335/113
On PI day (3.14) a french lady emailed me a gift that further to my Quran and Prime Numbers
reseach, the 355 days in a Hijri leap year divided by the chapters of The Message (113 chapters) is a
PI ~= days in a year cycle (circumference) divide by the number of chapters of the message (stright
path, diameter)
Here is a summary for all your readers about the prime numbers in the Quran.
Quran = Key + Message
The Key has 7 verses, 29 words, 139 letters) all are primes, with prime digit sums (7=7, 2+9=11,
1+3+9=13) and amazingly concatnating them left-to-right (729139) and right-to-left (139297) also
Make sure not to miss the 355 days of chapter The Merciful that map to the leap Hijri year 1433AH =
2012
I suspect the Hijir year becomes leap evey PI years a ―PI in the Sky‖ if you like
Ali Adams
Great article very informative and helpful, the only think I could see needing some furthre explainging
this quote
What is outset?
@GW: Ah, I just meant ―rather than finding the closest answer immediately, from the very beginning‖.
Great article. I think one of my face-palming moments was when I realized that pi was the result of
infinitely improving the number. (This also helped me to understand transcendental numbers, since
simple. Instead of picking an approximation (since, a lot of the time, we don‘t know ahead of time
what this should be), we use the pure number ―pi‖ to allow somebody else to approximate later. Not
only that, but it makes the formula easier to read as well by encapsulating the complexity in a single
(Side note: working with image processing and other forms of computer graphics, I sometimes wish
―pi‖ was initially measured with the radius instead of the diameter. That way, we could use the
constant itself instead of writing ―2*pi‖ everywhere. The constant really only represents half of the
shape of a circle.)
I really enjoyed this article, and it makes complete sense why Archimedes used this method, although
i would have never thought of it on my own. I liked the style of the writing too, very easy to
understand. The one thing is didn‘t understand was the formula for perimeter of the inside and outside
shapes. I don‘t understand why we use sin. Other than that great article
@Joe: Thanks for the comment! Yeah, one of the weird things about pi is that it‘s never ―done‖ — i.e.,
when does a shape with ―infinite‖ sides become a circle? It raises all sorts of interesting philosophical
questions too — i.e., we use pi for calculations but will never encounter a perfect circle in the real
world. But the beauty, as you say, is that we encapsulate this whole concept into a symbol which is
―use the best approximation of the perfect circle that you can..‖.
@Matthew: Thanks! Great question on the formula — there‘s an explanation on why sine is used here:
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~carother/pi/Pi3b.html
but I‘d like to cover it in more depth myself. Thanks again for the note!
there is only one place where i disagree. I would say that pi can ‗hide but not run‘ instead of the other
way around.
cheers
Wow!great information on pi this has really widen my view abt maths.maths is becoming interesting to
funny, i just only understood the point of taylor series while reading your article on intro to calculus.
and its right on this page! thanks for giving me a wonderful ―Aha!‖ moment. love your site.
if you ever watched the movie 3 idiots, you remind me of one character, Rancho. I hope that turned
@mel: Thanks for the kind words! Really happy the site is helping with those ahas. I haven‘t seen the
LIKE I DID.
Is there another article after this? I‘m probably not looking properly, but I want to read on!!
@brooke: Check out the ―Calculus‖ category for more on this theme!
http://betterexplained.com/articles/category/math/calculus/
I need to add related posts after each one, thanks for helping me realize .
I appologize at start if my english is not perfect – it is not my native language, so I express myself on
english not as I want, but as I can. I will try to express my opinion on the best possible way. It is a
true that our science becomes materialistic and I studied electrical engineering on that way, never
thinking about spiritual way of what I learned untill one day, when I figured out something about the
numbers and I find the open book in front of myself that never ends.
Squering the circle means to know how to generate number pi, how to generate its next digit, and not
only that. Squering the circle means also to be able to measure how long some curve line is. To
measure curve line – it means you have to compare it with some streight line, but it is hard to fit
So, squering the circle is the same as comparing curve line and streight line and finding their
corelation… as comparing soul and body and find the corelation… as comparing man and woman and
find the corelation…as comparering good and evel and find the corelation.
Please watch the numbers – 012345678910 – but only as a forms.curve- 0, streight line – 1,
curve or only streight lines) some of them are balance (combination). Each number has its own pair
01, 25, 34, 69, 78, 10 complicated as much as it is, but on some way opposite.
Now place them in the number pi…as you go more and more discovering number pi as a multiform
you actualy know more about each its digit, about extremes and about balance.
As long you go from digit to digit of the number pi you will find out – at start was circle, at the end is
circle – conection between these two is long, narrow and unsecure path very few people are following
on the right way these days, holding faith in their souls as a small light of the candel.
the equation above is wrong dipshit, the inner squares side doesnt equal .7, it equals the square root
of .5 . pythagoras states in the above equation that a²+b^2=c^2 〖.5〗^2 〖+ .5〗^2=c^2 .5=c^2 c=