This textbook provides a gentle overview of fundamental concepts related
to one-variable calculus. The original approach is a result of the
author's forty years of experience in teaching the subject at
universities around the world. In this book, Dr. Zalduendo makes use of
the history of mathematics and a friendly, conversational approach to
attract the attention of the student, emphasizing what is more
conceptually relevant and putting key notions in a historical
perspective. Such an approach was conceived to help them to overcome
potential difficulties in teaching and learning of this subject --
caused, in many cases, by an excess of technicalities and
computations.
Besides covering the core of the discipline -- real number, sequences
and series, functions, derivatives, integrals, convexity and
inequalities -- the book is enriched by "side trips" to relevant
subjects not usually seen in traditional calculus textbooks, touching on
topics like curvature, the isoperimetric inequality, Riemann's
rearrangement theorem, Snell's law, Buffon's needle problem, Gregory's
series, random walk and the Gauss curve, and more. An insightful
collection of exercises and applications completes this book, making it
ideal as a supplementary textbook for a calculus course or the main
textbook for an honors course on the subject.