Introductory Calculus For Infants

My one-year old son would probably try to disown me if I didn't give this book five stars. ;) The book itself is a children's story that uses a lot of concepts out of calculus to make silly points, but none of those concepts need to be actually understood to enjoy the book. The story is about poor x who is ostracized by most of the other letters since so few words begin with 'x'. His friend f comes along and shows x how, together, they can make functions that can do anything the other letters can do. It's quite cute with simple images that any young child will enjoy. The math is fine, though at various points it could be simplified without any loss. My wife tends to just ignore the equations when reading the book to our son, whereas I always make sure to read them. I've looked at a bunch of the other "for babies" or "for infants" books and this really is the only one of them that is actually good for babies! My son really does love the book.

This was bought as a gift for my dad- he is a math fanatic. Growing up, my brother and I were always lectured (in a fun way) about math and various problems. My dad would often get out a dry erase board and lay out problems to be completed. To this day he expresses the firm belief in how influential math is in keeping the mind sharp. Unfortunately for my dad, neither of his kids expressed the same joy for mathematics. But on the plus kid, his granddaughter loves numbers! When my husband saw this book, he knew he had to buy it. With that said, I can't tell you how fantastic this math book is. My daughter loves it! My dad loves it! It's a win-win! The illustrations of the equations are simplistically bold. They catch your eye and draw you in. It is such a simple and fun way to learn about math. I wish they would use this in junior high/high schools. It definitely expresses math in a way that typically isn't done. So to the math enthusiast, this book would make an excellent addition to some of those rigid and stiff math books that seem to dominate the subject. Buy This Book!

I was very pleasantly surprised when we bought the Introductory Calculus for Infants and I had the chance to read it. It is primarily an ABC book, using mathematical concepts for each letter (like D for derivative). It has a compelling (and subtle in many aspects) story full of optimism, about friendship, being nice and believing in oneself. At the same time, it familiarizes infants with mathematics in a friendly and happy way. I believe that a child who was introduced to mathematics with this book, will make a future student that not only is not afraid of it but instead sees math as a funny old friend. The drawings are large, clear (as they aim to a very young audience) and very humorous. The mathematical concepts are not only adequate, they are advanced if we keep in mind this is a book for infants. There is no problem solving but there often are, intelligent and child friendly puns that make this book a great read for infants and parents. My infant daughter learned to read her alphabet mainly thanks to this book. We have read it countless times and though it has many creases, it is - surprisingly - not torn, but is coming apart in the seams as you can see in the attached image. I do hope we see it as a board book one day, as it is indeed just paper and many infants will possibly tear it apart. Apart from that, it really is a brilliant book and makes for a great gift for infants, toddlers and pre-k ages. I highly recommend this book.

I'm not sure where to start with this book. My first reaction was that it was really not about calculus nor was it for babies. After a first read, I put it in the "donate to library" stack downstairs in our home rather than showing it to our baby. Then the baby, my granddaughter, saw it in the stack, amongst other books, and grabbed it and started gurgling whatever it is 6-month-old babies gurgle about. This is now her go-to book in her toy box. So, she gives it a 5 while I would give it a 1. But, who is this book for? Not me! It's for babies, so she wins, but I'd like my vote of 1 star to count for something when calculating the mean, so I gave her vote of 5 stars a weight of 1.4, making the total stars 4. When she learns to speak properly rather than in baby gurgles, then we can have a discussion about whether this is fair. One last thing in this rambling and boring review, I've found that so many baby books are full of words (surprise!) and not a lot of numbers. If you've used phonetics to teach your toddler to read (see larrysanger.org/2010/12/baby-reading ), then you might come to the same conclusion as me, namely, reading is a lot more complicated than mathematics. We seem to intuitively know that, so we expose our kids to pages and pages of words and pretty much leave the math to take care of itself, only to have our children enter school to learn that math is too hard. My son was a bit of a maths wiz, being promoted to university mathematics classes in high school, and now that he is in his thirties he tells me: "In grammar school, those teachers couldn't even factor simple exponential binomials, leaving myself and other students wondering what was wrong with them. Instead of learning the process, they would spend class time telling us how hard math was." What my son didn't know was that we would throw in a book full of numbers along with his other books which were full of letters/words so that he could start at an early age to see how easy it was to manipulate equations. So, no matter how much I don't like this "Introductory Calculus for Babies", it appeals to my granddaughter and introduces her to mathematics concepts and she sees a book which doesn't just have letters in it. By the way, one book the both of us like is "The Pythagorean Theorem for Babies", by Carlson. If you can find the time, please have a look and compare it to "Introductory Calculus for Babies" and see what you think. Finally, one last book which she just can't put down is "123", by Jo Ryan, Sarah Powell, and Amy Oliver. It is a great introduction to counting for babies, probably because it has texture and they like to run their fingers over the items to enumerate (at least that's true for our granddaughter). Happy counting!

I bought this for my nephew so he could get a jumpstart on calculus. I don’t think he read it as he still bad at it.

Gran libro, perfecto para bebes. Mucho color, buenos dibujos y cortito pero con buen material.

I bought this book when my daughter was just 4 months old. This is the very first book that I bought for her and she really loves it! The story is so fun that I, as an adult, is enjoying reading it to her so many times a day, every day! Her shrieks and giggles at every page inspires me to read it to her over and over again! I even had to buy another one because the first one has been torn and crumpled. She's a toddler now, she owns several books now, but this is still her most favourite one. She learned the small-case alphabet in this book. And I may need to buy her another copy (that would be her third!) because the second one is once again overused and crumpled. Mother-daughter bonding time is so much fun with this book! And she's learning while having fun! It's all really worth it!

very colourful and wonderfully simplistic illustrations with adequate explanations

my one-year old grandson is now into advanced calculus thanks to this early introduction

I purchased this as a present for my niece. She is only three and therefore struggles to get to grips with the `maths'. However, the book follows a story and actually helps with the alphabet! She enjoyed it being read to hear and I believe it will help her understand that maths is not a subject to be feared but a beautiful one to be explored!