Dennis Jarecke - Calculus in 5 Hours: Concepts Revealed so You Dont Have to Sit Through a Semester of Lectures

The obvious goal of this book is to teach you Calculus and to teach it to you quickly. However, there's one problem I can't overcome in this book.

Most people have been brainwashed into thinking they're bad at math. This brainwashing comes from experiences in school, upbringing, peer pressure, and a popular culture that often portrays smart people as anti-social and weird.

You may feel you can't learn something as complex as Calculus, but the scientific research doesn't support this.

You were born with an ability to learn, discover, and become an expert at mathematics. Learning a language is harder than learning Calculus. The only difference is that you don't remember how difficult it was to learn to speak, read, and write English. Yet, you accomplished it, didn't you?

The reason you were able to do something so complex at a young age is because you were born with a massively powerful supercomputer in your head. This supercomputer is deep inside your brain, and it specializes in detecting and amplifying patterns, performing mathematical operations, learning new concepts, and coming up with ideas from thin air.

But surrounding your supercomputer is a filter that limits what goes in and what comes out. That filter is your self-image.

If your self-image is programmed to believe you're not good at math, then you'll never demonstrate a proficiency in mathematics. However, if your self-image is changed so you know you're good at mathematics, then you'll be successful at learning it.

This isn't a bunch of cheerleading psycho-babble. A person who believes they're bad at math can be hypnotized and convinced they're good at it. In a state of hypnosis they can accurately work out math problems they've been exposed to, but consciously thought they couldn't solve.

Specifically, math avoidant college students have been exposed to hypnotic techniques and compared to control groups of similar college students. By using well-documented techniques of Ericksonian hypnotherapy, math instructors are able to systematically modify students' beliefs about their ability to do mathematics. Once their beliefs have been changed, those students make more A's, B's, and C's than those students in the control group.

In other words, a person's self-image can be changed to make them believe they're good at math. This allows their supercomputer to accept mathematical instructions, do the calculations, and give the correct answer.

To be clear, hypnosis by itself won't magically give you mathematical abilities. It can only modify your conscious and artificially negative belief that you're bad at math. Mathematical training (at whatever level you desire or need to be good at) plus a positive belief in your ability to do math is what creates success.

In the absence of hypnosis, you can associate positive emotions with learning Calculus. Think of a time you accomplished something you were proud of. Now take that same feeling and imagine getting the highest grade you've ever gotten in a math class.

This will start the process of changing your self-image. And when you do make a higher grade, your self-image will have been reprogrammed to believe you're good at math.

So, learning Calculus is not a matter of "if." It's a matter of "when."

In this book I promise to teach you Calculus as fast as I know how. Your job is to believe the scientific research and experience of people just like you who were able to learn Calculus.

You have a powerful computer in your head, and it will let you learn Calculus if you put positive, successful emotions into your learning process.

Let's begin...