Introduction

I have a habit of alternating between fiction and non-fiction with regards to my recreational reading. About a week ago I re-read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Couple that with the fact that I'd recently become interested in Project Euler, and you can see why my next choice for a book was math oriented.

All at once, I was in desperate need for something to read, knew I wanted to read something mathy, and didn't make time to get to the bookstore. Instead I started thinking about math, specifically calculus. I wrote up a couple of functions and sat down to remembering simple derivatives. I was pleased that I still remembered that . I was also dismayed that I didn't remember why. I vaguely remembered the long form of derivation: . I remembered pieces about the slope of the tangent line and the area under a function, but I didn't intuitively know where all of it came from.

It occurred to me I took entirely too much for granted with my higher math. I blame some of it on the way it was taught, and most of it on the way I learned it. I should have asked more questions about where the trigonometric functions came from and less time using them. Well, maybe not less time using them, but it was definitely a bit one sided.

To surmise, I picked up my old calculus book then decided I would go through it from start to finish and not take anything for granted. It's been slow, but for the last week at least, I've had a blast. I decided to start chronicling what I'm hence forth referring to as my Quest for Calculus. The following posts are not on any sort of schedule. I intend to post about everything of significance that I encounter, but I do have a job so my encounters are not guaranteed to be frequent.