Excursus into the History of Calculus

Throughout more than two millennia many formulas have been obtained, some of them beautiful, to calculate the number pi. Among them, we can find series, infinite products, expansions as continued fractions and expansions using radicals. Some expressions which are (amazingly) related to pi have been evaluated. In addition, a continual battle has been waged just to break the records computing digits of this number; records have been set using rapidly converging series, ultra fa...

We explore Leibniz's understanding of the differential calculus, and argue that his methods were more coherent than is generally recognized. The foundations of the historical infinitesimal calculus of Newton and Leibniz have been a target of numerous criticisms. Some of the critics believed to have found logical fallacies in its foundations. We present a detailed textual analysis of Leibniz's seminal text Cum Prodiisset, and argue that Leibniz's system for differential calcul...

Cauchy published his Cours d'Analyse 200 years ago. We analyze Cauchy's take on the concepts of rigor, continuity, and limit, and explore a pair of approaches in the literature to the meaning of his infinitesimal analysis and his sum theorem on the convergence of series of continuous functions.

This is a draft of my textbook on mathematical analysis and the areas of mathematics on which it is based. The idea is to fill the gaps in the existing textbooks. Any remarks from readers are welcome.

The usual $\epsilon,\delta$-definition of the limit of a function (whether presented at a rigorous or an intuitive level) requires a "candidate $L$" for the limit value. Thus, we have to start our first calculus course with "guessing" instead of "calculating". In this paper we criticize the method of using calculators for the purpose of selecting candidates for $L$. We suggest an alternative: a working formula for calculating the limit value L of a real function in terms of i...

We explore the potential of Simon Stevin's numbers, obscured by shifting foundational biases and by 19th century developments in the arithmetisation of analysis.

Several thoughts are presented on the long ongoing difficulties both students and academics face related to Calculus 101. Some of these thoughts may have a more general interest.

This article exemplifies a novel approach to the teaching of introductory differential calculus using the modern notion of ``infinitesimal'' as opposed to the traditional approach using the notion of ``limit''. I illustrate the power of the new approach with a discussion of the derivatives of the sine and cosine functions.

Felix Klein and Abraham Fraenkel each formulated a criterion for a theory of infinitesimals to be successful, in terms of the feasibility of implementation of the Mean Value Theorem. We explore the evolution of the idea over the past century, and the role of Abraham Robinson's framework therein.

These are notes and slides from a Pecha-Kucha talk given on March 6, 2013. The presentation tinkered with the question whether calculus on graphs could have emerged by the time of Archimedes, if the concept of a function would have been available 2300 years ago. The text first attempts to boil down discrete single and multivariable calculus to one page each, then presents the slides with additional remarks and finally includes 40 "calculus problems" in a discrete or so-called...