Purpose of this Site |
I created this site as a student to not only help other students with calculus, but to also to attempt to share my love of calculus and help others learn to enjoy it.
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History of Calculus
In the mid-17th century Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz are termed with "inventing" calculus, however it is important to note that mathematicians throughout the years have only been able to do what they did due to what others discovered previously. Isaac Barrow a professor to Isaac Newton is credited with proving the fundamental theorem of calculus (the first part)and during his time worked with tangent lines which would later help work towards the development of differential calculus. Newton, although found to be bad at geometry by Barrow, has made large contributions to calculus including the development of the binomial theorem, series for implicit functions, and series for trigonometric functions, and much more. Liebniz who was considered an amateur mathematician since he worked primarily as a diplomat, also made large contributions to calculus including discovering integration by parts, and developing a new method of finding maxima and minima along with discovering the chain rule. Liebniz is credited with creating the notation for integration and the notation dy/dx as opposed to Newton who used a prime (ex: f', f'', f''') to represent a derivative. There is controversy as to who should be credited with discovering calculus, Liebniz at first during his lifetime was seen as the father of calculus, but Newton later become attributed to the invention of calculus, both are pioneers in mathematics and therefore both deserve recognition in the history of calculus.
Calculus Job Fields
Many students pester their teachers with the question "When will I ever use this?" and to answer that question here are a few jobs calculus is required or useful for
- Astronautical Engineering
- Pharmaceutical Science
- Earthquake Safety Engineering
- Game Design
- Robotics Engineering
- Roller Coaster Design
- Economics
- Actuary
- Architecture
- Computer Science
- Environmental Engineering