INTRODUCTION
While arithmetic deals with sums, differences, products, and
quotients, calculus deals with derivatives and integrals. The
derivative and integral can be described in everyday language in
terms of an automobile trip. An automobile instrument panel has a
speedometer marked off in miles per hour with a needle indicating
the speed. The instrument panel also has an odometer which tallies
up the distance travelled in miles (the
mileage).
Both the speedometer reading and the odometer reading change with
time; that is, they are both “functions of time,” The speed shown
on the speedometer is the rate of change, or derivative, of the
distance. Speed is found by taking a very small interval of time
and forming the ratio of the change in distance to the change in
time. The distance shown on the odometer is the integral of the
speed from time zero to the present. Distance is found by adding up
the distance travelled from the first use of the car to the
present.
The calculus has a great variety of applications in the natural and
social sciences. Some of the possibilities are illustrated in the
problems. However, future applications are hard to predict, and so
the student should be able to apply the calculus himself in new
situations. For this reason it is important to learn why the
calculus works as well as what it can do. To explain why the
calculus works, we present a large number of example, and we
develop the mathematical theory with great
care.
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