Calculus Without Limits

About the Book

Calculus without Limits is an original exposition of single-variable calculus using the classic differential approach. Written in an engaging, popular style by an award-winning teacher, Calculus without Limits is the first completely new calculus book to hit the shelves in 95 years that deliberately minimizes the use of limits, one of the major stumbling blocks initially standing in the way of calculus students.

 Calculus without Limits presents its subject in nine chapters: 1) ‘Introduction’, 2) ‘Barrow’s Diagram’, 3) ‘The Two Fundamental Problems of Calculus’, 4) ‘Foundations’, 5) ‘Solving the First Problem’, 6) ‘Antiprocesses’, 7) ‘Solving the Second Problem’, 8) ‘Sampling the Power of Differential Equations’, and 9) ‘Conclusion: Magnificent Shoulders’. Approximately 85 diagrams and a plethora of worked examples help facilitate student understanding in an exposition that measures a mere 330 pages from cover to cover. Real-life applications examine problems from a variety of disciplines ranging from physics to finance. Additionally, Calculus without Limits provides plenty of practice for the beginning calculus student via 200 exercises from routine to quite challenging—all answered in an ‘Answer to Problems’ section in the back of the book. Five appendices summarize key formulas from various mathematical disciplines, and a brief one-page bibliography completes the book.

 Calculus without Limits is suitable as a self-study text or as supplementary text augmenting a regular multi-term college calculus sequence. It can also serve as the primary text for a one-term Business Calculus or Calculus for Appreciation Course. Advanced High School Students will find it ideal for quickly mastering calculus basics before engaging a more rigorous college offering. Lastly, Calculus without Limits  is meant for all those people who really never learned the why behind calculus, and now, many years later—perhaps as a practicing professional—may want to reacquaint themselves with an old academic friend for the very first time.

About the Author

John C. Sparks is a career federal employee at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Dayton, Ohio) with over thirty years of engineering and management experience. Additionally, he is an award-winning—named the Ohio Association of Two Year Colleges’ 2002-03 Adjunct Teacher of the Year—twenty-year veteran of Dayton’s nationally recognized Sinclair Community College where he teaches mathematics on a part-time basis. Mr. Sparks is a native of Xenia, Ohio and is a graduate of Xenia High School (class of ‘65). He holds bachelor and master’s degrees from Wright State University, and a master’s degree from the Air Force Institute of Technology. John and his wife, Carolyn, have recently celebrated thirty-five years of marriage and have two married sons: Robert, living in Virginia, and Curtis, living in Nebraska.

A writer at heart, Mr. Sparks has participated as a technical writer for eight curriculum-development activities sponsored by Sinclair’s AIM - Advanced Integrated Manufacturing - Center. As early as 1985, he was ‘writing across the curriculum’ by requiring term papers in mathematics courses. Prior to coming to Author House, Mr. Sparks self-published two volumes of poetry in 1998 and 2000.  Author House currently has three of his latest books in publication: Calculus without Limits (Mathematics, 2004); Gold, Hay and Stubble (Poetry, 2004); and The Student’s Essential Formula Book (Mathematics/Reference, 2004).