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K I'm a self taught programmer and been so for a couple of years. But in order to go beyond the programming scab work (entry lvl, Tester, Web Dev, Commercial App Dev; of which I am more than grateful for) and go beyond conventional programming gigs. (I.E. R&D, Embedded Devices, Scientific Computing and the like ) I'm going for a BS in Computer Engineering. However I'm not all that great in the Calculus Department. I've taken Calculus 1 before and had to drop because of a job opportunity. But while I was in it I gotta say stuff like the Chain rule for derivatives and the like was really kicking my ass. So it seems I have a long way to go as far as the maths in school. (although Discreet Math does look fun) Learning by relating concepts known to concepts unknown seems to work well for me and I was wondering if there was any recommended materials that would provide good self study supplemental material for the time when I have to take Calculus classes again.

Terrance
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    The trouble with calculus from a programming perspective is that the mathematics is (a) symbolic, and (b) infinitely precise. So first you have to do the pencil-and-paper / Mathematica work to get some sort of formula, then you have to worry about numerical approximation, which is basically a whole separate field. – Steve Jessop Sep 08 '10 at 14:44
  • So the best approach is the standard approach in this case? – Terrance Sep 08 '10 at 15:02
  • Found this. http://www.wolframalpha.com/. Great for reverse engineering a problem. Shows step by step solutions. – Terrance Sep 17 '10 at 14:34
  • lambda calculus != calculus. They have basically nothing to do with each other, but "calculus" is latin for "counting things". Lambda calculus is also worthwhile (at least, it looked to be in the two weeks I took it, but I was taking more classes than I needed to or had time for, so I had to drop something). It won't help you at all with that Calculus 1 class, it will help you a lot with functional programming. – Steve Jessop Jul 10 '12 at 17:35
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    There is actually a book on this by Ken Iverson, Calculus. It's in the J programming language, which not many people use, but it does fit the requirement. – user6189164 May 29 '18 at 17:15
  • This is an amazing find!!! Thanks, You put this into an answer I'd gladly upvote it at the very least. http://www.jsoftware.com/books/pdf/calculus.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_E._Iverson https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/iverson_9147499.cfm – Terrance May 29 '18 at 18:56

2 Answers2

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There is simply no better book to learn calculus from than Stewart's Calculus, period. It is not aimed at programmers, but it will give you a thorough grounding in the principles. [Spivak's calculus is good, but not so easy to learn from, and it takes a more theoretical standpoint. I wish I'd had Stewart's calculus when I studied it]. I have a copy of Stewart's Calculus to hand; it's always the first place I look things up!

There is an accompanying web site here.

Have you looked at the free offerings at MIT OpenCourseware, for example: 18.085 Computational Science and Engineering I

Mitch Wheat
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  • Glancing over the Stewart's Calculus and MIT Stuff. I like the additional history and background info along with the explanations. Definitely gives me a bit of background as to the why and a context in which to grok much of it. Gotta say ATM I'm liking the MIT Course even though I don't all of whats being talked about but the review looks promising and the fact that the class uses Matlab is pretty helpful as well. – Terrance Sep 08 '10 at 15:00
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Calculus is actually a continuous world, Programming happens on the digital computer (discrete world), so I think you cannot learn seriously calculus by considering only the discrete world, although some concepts in calculus can be better understood by considering the discrete case

ISTB
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    I absolutely disagree with this. When I think about calculus from a programmer's perspective, I think of named variables, real world examples, and clear descriptions. These are things that are still lacking in most calculus books. – CornSmith Dec 10 '13 at 22:58