Rhetorical Analysis:

• What is the reviewer’s stance? How does he compliment and criticize the book? What does he see as the book’s strengths and weaknesses? 
• What is Strogatz’s stance? His purpose?
• Who is the audience for Strogatz’s book? Who is the audience for this review?
• How does the reviewer provide historical context? How does Strogatz?
• In general, what does Strogatz discuss? What is his argumentative style?

Personal Essay section of the response:

What is a “calculus” point of view? Or a math, science, or engineering point of view? How have you applied this type of point of view in your life?

If you would like, turn this in by Wednesday, in class or via email. Write as much as you want/can.

Here’s the link to the article: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/to-infinity-and-beyond-the-power-of-calculus/

Heres My Response

            Calculus! Student’s greatest fear has revolved around math classes which send most people away running. A handful of students have been afraid of math their whole life, meanwhile there is a handful that love and worship math. In the 19^thcentury, calculus became the foundation of science and engineering education (Barany, To Infinity and Beyond). As you probably already know, but calculus is a major course for those pursuing an engineering degree or science degree. Learning about calculus can be tough, but studying and constant review makes it easier for many. Steven Strogatz wrote a book about how he wanted to help people understand calculus, meanwhile Michael J. Barany reviewed it in his blog, “To Infinity and Beyond: The Power of Calculus.” 

            Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, has been trying to help many collogues get over the fear of math. Strogatz tries to do this by writing about math and its history. According to the book review, “His latest, Infinite Powers, aims to explain the fundamental ideas of calculus, some of its history, and a few of its applications.” (Barany, To Infinity and Beyond). Calculus us based on a paradoxical way of thinking. In other words, it is not your regular day thinking, as its rather a different way of thinking to problem-solving. Many professionals have mastered calculus and they trained to see calculus all around them. Michael Barany states, “The key to understanding calculus is what Strogatz calls the Infinity Principle.” The Infinity Principle helps people analyze something complicated. The principle refers to the problem being broken down to infinity simpler parts and analyzing those. Then when you analyzed all the simple parts, you can put them back together and analyze the whole problem together. If you think about it, analyzing a bunch of small parts is easier than analyzing the whole problem all at once. Strogatz has a sole purpose to inform and teach many people that calculus is all around us. His book is clearly targeted for people who struggle with math as supported by the Michael Barany. “If you and calculus are on friendly terms, you will find much to learn enjoy here, but you are not the target audience.” (Barany) Understanding the basics of calculus leads to unlocking the whole world of calculus. Strogatz uses analogy and illustrations and thought experiments and examples to explain how to adopt the calculus mentality. 

            Michael J. Barany’s blog shares many analogies which Strogatz shares on his book to help many try to understand calculus. Barany did have a couple of things to say about his book, especially with how Strogatz explains the history of calculus. “Strogatz is an expert mathematician but an amateur historian, and this combination shows in his patchy choice of subjects and occasionally dubious attributions.” (Barany). Clearly, we see how Barany disagree with the choice of historical events presented. He comes on to express how many figures are missing in the calculus history that play a huge part. For example, Leonhard Euler in the 18^thcentury and Augustin-Louis Cauchy in the 19^thcentury. This is just Barany opinion though of course so we do not truly know how important they are to calculus history. 

            Understanding calculus can be a huge thing for many. The key idea to understanding calculus is that every problem can be broken down to infinity parts and analyzed instead of analyzing the whole problem as a whole. Calculus is all around us, from the stars, clocks, or microwave ovens. Calculus is your key to understanding other kinds of knowledge and action. The important thing to get from calculus is that no matter how deeply you understand calculus it helps you understand the whole world if you actually think about it.