Early Thomas Day, or half a century of calculus

    When I was taking calculus as a West High School senior I found
    most of the book (Protter and Morrey) to be understandable enough
    until the chapter on the definite integral. I could not follow it
    at all. The obvious solution was to rewrite the chapter so that I
    could understand it.

    It has been 50 years since I rewrote chapter 8 and I was amusing
    myself by rereading my rewriting. It reinspired a remembrance of
    what I really liked about mathematics. You can enjoy it with me
    by viewing the PDF copy of my original typescript. I assure you
    that I subsequently learned how to spell "theorem" and "argument".
    https://PivotRock.net/Opera_perfecta/didactica/DefiniteIntegral.pdf

    I have heard that some of my peers are planning a 50th reunion
    but from what I heard this is to be some sort of social event.
    For many of my peers high school was sort of a social event so
    maybe that makes sense to them. I marked the half century last
    spring by finagling my way into lecturing the geometry classes
    on a fun kind of non-Euclidean geometry. You can share in that
    also. My life is an open book but who reads it?
    https://PivotRock.net/SpaceStructures

    I like lectures because once you get people in the room generally
    they feel compelled to sit through the whole presentation. That's
    my guilty secret about preaching too: There are a lot of rewards
    that feed back to the preacher's ego from standing in front of a
    group of Christians and telling them what God says. The ego gets
    less stroked the more careful you are to repeat what God actually
    is saying but you can make up for that by saving your sermon and
    later rereading your insightful remarks. That's my plan for the
    last Sunday of this year, December 29, when I next get to preach.
    I'm not done yet but eventually this sermon too will be unread on
    the world wide web.
    https://PivotRock.net/sermones/

    Looking ahead to December 29 (you're all going to come up for it,
    right?) keeps me from wallowing in the ancient past. Even though
    my telephones have regressed to around 1977, I'm watching TV and
    reading Pogo comic strips from 1958, and my preferred academic
    journal is now "Antiquity". Then there is my new dog Alek who is
    proud and happy and prone to carsickness. Alek Puppy is looking
    forward from whatever era he is living in; he is also on the web.
    https://PivotRock.net/pets/Alek/

    Given the times we live in there is a good case to be made for
    not wallowing in the present. A mere 60 year regression may not
    give sufficient perspective; I'm inclined to step back a little
    farther next year. Perhaps 635 years will prove more palatable.


    Peter Cardinal
    The Pivot Rock Fund
    https://PivotRock.us/

      Every society has the same problem: no country likes to hear
      from the victims of its history.
        -- Annegret Gollin. Quoted by Philip Oltermann,
        "Stasi victims and their quest for compensation"
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/06/ive-been-shafted-
     twice-stasi-victims-and-their-quest-for-compensation