Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

Americans don't get a very good education in math and science. While never great, it's plummeted over the last three decades. Many Americans--even those who are highly-educated in other areas--appear to take pride in this ignorance.



To her great credit, Jennifer Ouellette is having none of it. She has been making a career of filling the gaps, first in physics and now in mathematics. You don't have to be a professional mathematician to find that math enriches your view of the world. It's not always the conventional route that brings you that understanding, but good coaches and a bit of elbow grease will get you there. I have heard Ouellette interviewed on radio and podcasts and she seems to have the perfect personality to share this with a large audience.



I was disappointed to find that this book falls short of what it could have been. It starts out with great promise, setting a historical context with Archimedes and later figures. We soon move into a trip to Las Vegas. Ouellette lays out a number of interesting problems to consider, beginning with the speed and distance of the drive. After only the tiniest bit of math--all expressed verbally--we're on to the dice table and a discussion of probabilities. Maybe we'll have a little more math here, but were soon on to something else. There are always comments about how calculus could help to understand a problem, but there's no follow-through. This is a pattern that is repeated throughout the book. The section on zombies passes quickly through Jane Austin, parasitic fungus in ants and Malthusian population growth. The book becomes very much like a disjointed version of James Burke's "Connections" series from the 1970s. At each stop along the way, we're told that a derivative or an integration would be useful, but we don't see the math. As generations of teachers have said, "show your work".



I think that Ouellette needed to show more trust in her readers. The fact that the word "Calculus" is in the book title means that the audience will be self-selecting. If you don't know calculus or aren't interested in learning, you're not going to bother with this book. I don't think that mentions of zombies or weight loss will get past the simple terror that the word "calculus" unfairly strikes in the innumerate heart. She adopted a policy of not showing any equations until the final few pages of appendix. What better time than during the discussion of the problem? Ouellette is the perfect person for the job. She has an approachable readable style and a gentle self-deprecating wit. I think that the majority of her readers would stick with her as she walked through the techniques.



I hope I've misjudged the book and that the problems I perceive are not shared by other readers. We need to get smarter and I appreciate Ouellette's effort, even if I feel it didn't fully succeed.