Books

This book has three main aims:

1. To distill first-semester college-level calculus to its essentials and simplify the subject;

2. To make calculus accessible to a wide range of audiences, including those without prior knowledge of trigonometry or exponential and logarithmic functions. (If you can graph quadratic functions and solve quadratic equations, you can learn calculus from this book.);

3. To showcase the importance and impact of calculus through carefully selected real-world applications that are relevant to our lives, important to social/life/physical sciences, or inherently intriguing or beautiful.

You can preview the preface and first chapter (just 7 pages) on the book's website, which also contains interactive applets I created to illustrate calculus concepts and additional resources.

Continuing with the theme of exposing readers to the hidden mathematics all around them, The Calculus of Happiness takes the reader back to pre-calculus mathematics, discussing how polynomials, exponentials/logarithms, and basic probability shows up in the three areas of life we all worry about: health, wealth, and love. The book has been translated into Korean, with translations into Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese in the works.

Content from the book has been developed into interactive calculators by TIME Magazine, and led to radio and TV interviews about how mathematics can help us optimize our lives. Links to this and other content--in addition to the interactive applets and calculators I created for the book--can be found on the book's page on my site. As before, the first chapter is available to download on the publisher's page for the book.

I wrote this book to provide students (and the general public) with a hands-on introduction to calculus. The book takes you through a typical day in my life--from waking up to going to sleep--and discusses the calculus hidden all around us in even the most mundane tasks (like making a cup of coffee).

Everyday Calculus was honored as one of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Books for General Audiences and Young Adults for 2014. It has also earned praise from Publisher's Weekly and readers on Amazon and Goodreads. The book has also been translated into Korean, Japanese, and Portuguese.

More details on the book--including the interactive applets I created for it--can be found on the book's page on my site, as well as its page on its publisher's site, where you can download the first chapter for free.

I contributed an essay to this book that I titled Help Save the Planet: Take the 1/2 CO2e Challenge! In the essay, I use data from the Environmental Working Group to create an equation that estimates the greenhouse gas emissions associated with diet. This enables one to determine how the percentage of carbs, fats, etc. a diet contains affects the diet's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (chiefly by way of the various emissions that resulted from farming and transporting the food contained in the diet). In addition, the Equation helps one see how lowering the proportion of the diet consisting of specific food groups (e.g., meat) lowers the diet's overall impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

I contributed a chapter to this book that I titled How Constructivism Can Boost Success in STEM Fields for Women and Students of Color. Here's the chapter's abstract:

"National Science Foundation statistics document a stark gap in degree attainment in most STEM fields for women and students of color. This chapter summarizes research on learning, academic achievement, and persistence to help understand the origin of this gap. Discussion focuses on the central role that constructivist teaching and learning environments play in boosting success for women and students of color in STEM. Practical tweaks and tips are presented to encourage educators to incorporate this pedagogy to improve learning and achievement for all students."