Need math book(s)

There are many areas of mathematics and any author can pick from his/her background. I mean to say: don't worry if something is not immediately clear. A great site to look things up is Mathworld but it is not very beginner-friendly.

Basically, as you said, you have a good knowledge of linear algebra -- matrices, vectors, etc. What you might want to read up on about is calculus. Pretty much any book will do and they all are actually called Calculus -- can be found relatively cheap in 2nd-hand book shops.

Also interesting is a book that covers mathematics in some specific area; preferrably engineering or physics. This will give you a good background for the abstract theory.

Finally, a whole different thing is discrete mathematics which is in my opinion also crucial for programmers but more in the sense of datastructures and algorithms.

As for your two remarks:

(1) The sign is indeed the Greek letter sigma. It denotes a sum over some range; much like a for-loop although I'd like to argue it is the other way around. It usually has three parts

(a) part below the sigma: names the iteration variable and the start (i = 1)
(b) part above the sigma: names the end (n i.e. i goes from 1 to n)
(c) part right of the sigma: names the term to be summed (x_i)

So: sigma_{i=1}^{n} x_i would denote summing the numbers x_1, x_2, ..., x_n

(2) The integral is much like sigma only for continuous series. The most general example is the area covered by a function. Suppose you have some wild function f(x) and you want to know the area between the curve of f(x) and the x-axis, between two points a and b. Then an integral is used to denote this:

    {b    | f(x) dx   a}

Solving is another thing. There is a lot of theory involved, including derivatives and inverse derivatives (primitives). Good stuff to read and very good if you grasp it!

Greetz,

Illco

(PS: underscore means subscript and hat means superscript)

I had the same questions a little while back, and this book really helped:

Complete Idiot's Guide to Calculus

It's pretty easy to follow. :)

Thanks, I think I'll buy "The complete idiot's guide to calculus", even though it seems very small. Calculus made easy also seems good, so I'll read a couple more reviews on both before deciding.

Check out this site if you want to teach yourself calculus.

Quote:

Original post by ontheheap Check out this site if you want to teach yourself calculus.

Thanks that looks pretty usefull.