Jennifer Ouellette - The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

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Table of Contents

THE CALCULUS DIARIES

Jennifer Ouellette is the author of The Physics of the Buffyverse (2007) and Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics (2006). Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Discover, Salon, Nature, New Scientist, Physics Today, Symmetry, and Physics World, among other venues. She maintains a general science-and-culture group blog called Cocktail Party Physics, and blogs for Discovery News. In November 2008, Ouellette became director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences aimed at fostering creative collaborations between scientists and entertainment industry professionals. In spring 2008, she was Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. Ouellette holds a black belt in jujitsu, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Caltech physicist Sean M. Carroll.

On the Web:

www.jenniferouellette-writes.com
www.cocktailpartyphysics.com

Praise forThe Calculus Diaries

In this wonderful and compulsively readable book, Jennifer Ouellette finds the signature of mathematicsand especially calculus, of coursein the most unexpected places, the gorgeously lunatic architecture of Spains Antoni Gaudi, the shimmering arc of waves on a beach. Just following her on the journey is half the fun. But the other half is learning about the natural beauty and elegance of calculations. Ouellettes ever clear and always stimulating voice is a perfect match to the subjectand The Calculus Diaries is a tour de force.

Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

A charming, gentle introduction to important mathematical concepts and their relevance to everyday life.

Leonard Mlodinow, author of The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Jennifer Ouellettes calculus confessional is a delight, and an example of the finest kind of science writing. Her book reveals to its readers the gritty inner workings of the most important idea humans have ever thought. (Yes, calculus is that big: its all about understanding how things change in space and time, and there just isnt much thats more important than that.) Ouellettes wit, her elegant wielding of metaphor, and her passion for both math and funky culture produce this crucial insight: every equation tells a story, she says, and shes right, and the tales she tells here will captivate even the most math-phobic.

Tom Levenson, author of Newton and the Counterfeiter

Back in the day, when I was close to flunking out of calculus class because I couldnt understand why it was worth my valuable time to actually understand it, I needed someone like Jennifer Ouellette to gently explain how I wrong I was. Shes like every English majors dream math teacher: funny, smart, infected with communicable enthusiasm, and she can rock a Buffy reference. In this book, she hastens the day when more people are familiar with an integral function than with Justin Bieber.

Peter Sagal, host of NPRs Wait Wait... Dont Tell Me! and author of The Book of Vice

As amusing as it is enlightening, The Calculus Diaries is no dry survey of abstractions. Its a guide to everyday lifeto car trips and roller-coaster rides, diet and exercise, mortgages and the housing bubble, even social networking. As Ouellette modestly recounts her own learning curve, she and her husband become characters alongside eccentrics such as Newton and Gaudi and William the Conqueror. Like a great dance teacher, Ouellette steers us so gently we think were gliding along on our own.

Michael Sims, author of Adams Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form

Zombies? Surfing? Gambling? Nobody told me calculus could be like this. To my twelfth-grade math teacher: I demand a do-over!

Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution

Like the movies Batman Begins, Spider-Man, or Superman, The Calculus Diaries is the story of how an insightful, creative, and hard-working young person acquires superpowers and uses them for the benefit of society. Only this tale is true: Jennifer Ouellette cant fly or spin a web, but she can spin a yarn. The Calculus Diaries documents the authors seduction by mathematics and her conquering of itEureka!to see the world with sharper vision. For too many people, mathcalculus in particularis an albatross. But Ouellette reveals math for what it is: a powerful tool for solving problems and the exquisite language we use to describe nature. Reading this book will make you smarter. And more powerful.

Eric Roston, author of The Carbon Age

For Sean, the sine to my cosine.

Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since one who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences, or the things of this world. And what is worst, those who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance, and so do not seek a remedy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book grew out of my impulsive Internet purchase of a DVD lecture series, Calculus Made Clear, offered by the Teaching Company. The instructor, a math professor at the University of Texas-Austin, named Michael Starbird, combined the necessary rigorin the form of simple diagrams and derivationswith an appealing (to me) conceptual approach, punctuated with colorful historical anecdotes. Nothing makes an English major happier than a compelling narrative. Tell us a good story and well follow you anywhere, even into the minefield of scary calculus equations. Starbirds lectures inspired me first to write a series of blog posts on Cocktail Party Physics about my adventures exploring calculus, and then to expand those into a full-length book.

But Starbird had the advantage of working with fertile ground. I owe a great debt to Alan Chodos, a physicist who taught for years at Yale University before becoming associate executive officer of the American Physical Society. That gift for teaching never really left him. Alan not only encouraged me to write my first book, but carefully explained many basic physics concepts to me and insisted that I let him walk me through the relevant equations. We now live on opposite sides of the country, but Alan has had a lasting impact on my life, in the tradition of great teachers and mentors everywhere.

I also benefited greatly from close readings of a handful of other works, most notably Charles Seifes Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea; Jason Bardis The Calculus Wars; David Berlinskis A Tour of the Calculus; and Leonard Mlodinows The Drunkards Walk. All were instrumental in shaping my thinking about the concepts of calculus. When it came to putting those concepts into practice, I found W. Michael Kelleys The Complete Idiots Guide to Calculus to be a helpful resource.

Thanks are due to the many people (mathephiles and mathephobes alike) who generously shared their stories and insights over the two years I spent researching and writing this book, including (but not limited to) Bisi Agboola, Dave Bacon, Jason Bardi, Allyson Beatrice, Adam Boesel, Ben Carey, Deborah Castleman, Rob Chiappetta, Calla Cofield, K. C. Cole, Julianne Dalcanton, Geoffrey Edelstein, Adam Frank, Milton Garces, David Grae, David Gross, Lauren Gunderson, Kevin Hand, David Harris, Joanne Hewett, Karen Heyman, Daniel Holz, Alice Hung, Valerie Jamieson, George Johnson, Rich Kim, Lee Kottner, Tom Levenson, M. G. Lord, Gabrielle Lyon, Malcolm MacIver, Alex Morgan, Chad Orzel, Dennis Overbye, Phil Plait, Joe Polchinski, Lisa Randall, Abbas Raza, James Riordon, David Saltzberg, Robert Smith?, Tara Smith, Shari Steelsmith-Duffin, Ben Stein, Brian Switek, Carol Tavris, Kip Thorne, Mark Trodden, Jatila van der Veen, Robin Varghese, Rosie Walton, Gordon Watts, Margaret Wertheim, Risa Wechsler, Glen Whitman, Carolee Winstein, Mark Wise, and Tony Zee. Extra special thanks to Janet Blumberg, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, and Eric Roston, who slogged through parts of the draft manuscript and offered helpful critiques.

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