The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems: For People Who Don’t Speak Math

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5 Reviews

1. I understood Calculus 1 because I had a very good teacher in highschool but once I hit college, I had one bad professor after another. As my teacher from highschool had mentioned, most professors are really good at doing the math but don’t have the skills to be teachers, explaining math in a way people can understand. So after failing Calculus 2 twice, I bought this book and studied for my LIFE! After struggling the first couple weeks of this course over the summer, I became extremely desperate and did some research for books that’ll help me survive this class. The problem was, there wasn’t many Calculus TWO books, mainly just books that covered topics from Calculus ONE. This book had good reviews too, so I went out and bought it. This book helped me out most in the homework we got every single day. It gave me clear explanations why this and that is wrong and the common mistakes one would face when doing this and that problem.

   For me, this book was a miracle. Thank you Michael Kelley for making it! This book was hands down the key to passing Calculus 2 with a B. Without it I would’ve easily failed (like a 35% or something). This book is a keeper. I’m using it to help my girlfriend with her homework.

2. Anytime I have a calculus or math question, I usually start with the Calculus problems book because it has an easy format and the explanations are crystal clear from integration to infinite series. The book has a nice flow and is well organized as each Chapter focuses on one particular issue.

3. I have also read an another much better written book by the same author (Humongous Book of Statistics Problems) and I am disappointed by this academician book that is not much better than a standard Calculus textbook.

   Most of this book is dedicated to theoratical concepts of Calculus. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that. Except that the book is just as dry, boring, and uninspiring as regular Calculus textbooks that most of us would fight to stay awake while reading.

   There are only few problems dedicated to practical application of Calculus. The rest is dedicated to graphs, limits, theorems, and equations. That’s too bad because Calculus is one of the most, if not THE most, practically useful mathematical concept known to man.

   The book also spends surprsingly few pages on differentiation and integration. The maximum and minimum values using differentiation, for example, are hardly covered and certainly not covered in depth.

   I don’t believe in learning Calculus for the Calculus itself (learning how to draw graphs and finding its limits and areas etc). I want to learn Calculus so I can use its power in real life. In that, this book was quite disappointing.

4. This book is not that thorough. Only a couple problems per concept, and the problems are pretty basic. These are technically easy enough to be my teachers’ examples. If you really want to learn and develop calculus skills, get another book. This book is a bit too basic to be taken seriously. The AP Calculus exam, does NOT have these types of easy-peasy problems, no offense. All in all, I just don’t find this book too serious to be a prominent contender in Calculus workbooks. I prefer Shaum’s outlines. They have waay more difficult problems.

5. I am really happy with this book. The review section is great and the layout is very clean. However, I have already found a few mistakes which makes me wonder which mistakes I am missing. Could really use an errata.