Student’s Guide to Calculus by J. Marsden and A. Weinstein

Book excerpt: This Student Guide is exceptional, maybe even unique, among such guides in that its author, Fred Soon, was actually a student user of the textbook during one of the years we were writing and debugging the book. (He was one of the best students that year, by the way. ) Because of his background, Fred has taken, in the Guide, the point of view of an experienced student tutor helping you to learn calculus. While we do not always think Fred's jokes are as funny as he does, we appreciate his enthusiasm and his desire to enter into communication with his readers; since we nearly always agree with the mathe matical judgements he has made in explaining the material, we believe that this Guide can serve you as a valuable supplement to our text. To get maximum benefit from this Guide, you should begin by spending a few moments to acquaint yourself with its structure. Once you get started in the course, take advantage of the many opportunities which the text and Student Guide together provide for learning calculus in the only way that any mathe matical subject can truly be mastered - through attempting to solve problems on your own. As you read the text, try doing each example and exercise your self before reading the solution; do the same vith the quiz problems provided by Fred.