Thomas' calculus
by Maurice D. Weir · first published 2009
42% recommend50% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Exercise-heavy calculus textbook that readers found clear and efficient, with a strong trigonometry introduction; a favorite for students and engineers wanting a thorough reference with plenty of practice problems.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2018–2023Discrete Mathematical Structures
Bernard Kolman, Robert C. Busby, Sharon Cutler Ross, Robert Busby
Recommended by 2 · mentioned by 32 recommend · 3 mention2 recommend · 32 recommend
2008–2024Quick calculus
Daniel Kleppner, Norman Ramsey, Aviv Reʼuven, Universiṭah ha-petuḥah
Recommended by 4 · mentioned by 64 recommend · 6 mention4 recommend · 64 recommend
2009–2025Advanced Engineering Mathematics
Erwin Kreyszig
Recommended by 12 · mentioned by 1912 recommend · 19 mention12 recommend · 1912 recommend
2020–2026Introduction to Applied Linear Algebra
Stephen Boyd, Lieven Vandenberghe
Recommended by 7 · mentioned by 107 recommend · 10 mention7 recommend · 107 recommend
2009–2025Calculus, Early Transcendentals
James Stewart
Recommended by 5 · mentioned by 155 recommend · 15 mention5 recommend · 155 recommend
2014–2026Methods of mathematics applied to calculus, probability, and statistics
Richard Hamming
Recommended by 6 · mentioned by 96 recommend · 9 mention6 recommend · 96 recommend
2010–2025Who is Fourier?
Transnational College of Lex
Recommended by 15 · mentioned by 1615 recommend · 16 mention15 recommend · 1615 recommend
2008–2026Calculus Made Easy
Silvanus Phillips Thompson
Recommended by 81 · mentioned by 13581 recommend · 135 mention81 recommend · 13581 recommend
For calculus, I found Thomas' Calculus (https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Calculus-Early-Transcendentals...) the most helpful. It's a textbook but has a lot of exercises.
on “Ask HN: What are the best general math workbooks?” ↗I have Thomas' Calculus from the 1960s, the same book that Knuth promotes in interviews as being responsible for him choosing a math degree. Very high signal to noise ratio without being as terse as Apostol https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Analytic-Geometry-Supplement...…
on “The Beauty of Calculus [video]” ↗Quick Calculus by Daniel Kleppner Also, if you can find an ancient copy of Thomas Calculus when it was two volumes. Buy the first volume. Solve all the odd problems, the solutions are in the back. That's how I learned! A later edition of Thomas was a single volume big thick yellowish book.…
on “Patrick Winston Explains Deep Learning” ↗…bookshelf (including mine) during the mid-to-late 20th century. Still in print, nearing the 100th edition. Also, some of my old favorite textbooks that I used at University were not mentioned, including Thomas' _Calculus and Analytical Geometry_. I still have my red cloth covered Addison-Wesley 3rd edition, no longer in print, but a much later edition might still be in print.
on “Ask HN: Older textbooks/papers you consider classics still worth studying today?” ↗…still great introduction to precalculus (with a great section on trigonometry in particular from memory), Simmons' Precalculus in a Nutshell has a great introduction to this. Then you can read a book like Thomas Calculus, which has a great introduction to trigonometry in the first review chapter. I would even say that you would be better off working through the books above than if you had the high school classes; the…
on “Turns are better than radians” ↗…the off-chance that trigonometry is not taught in high school (which I predict is rare), a first-year student taking calculus in university must learn it on their own time. Good calculus textbooks (e.g. Thomas Calculus) even account for this, having fairly comprehensive textbook sections on what you need to know about trigonometry to succeed in the calculus course. Most students who therefore took math to pre-calculus…
on “Turns are better than radians” ↗…Students - Blitzer (ISBN-13 978-0134178943 ) - College Algebra - Blitzer (ISBN-13 978-0321782281) - Precalculus - Blitzer (ISBN-13 978-0321559845) - Precalculus - Stewart (ISBN-13 978-1305071759) - Thomas' Calculus: Early Transcendentals (ISBN-13 978-0134439020) - Calculus - Stewart (ISBN-13 978-1285740621) The main goal of learning is to understand the ideas and concepts at hand as “deeply” as possible. Understanding…
on “Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking” ↗…So for the finite amount of time you have, what problems do you choose to work on? I think maths and calculus is a great bet. Though I'd rather suggest a young person do Spivak's Calculus as opposed to Thomas' Calculus as Knuth used. You'll notice that most of geniuses we know were spending long periods of time solving problems. I'm kind of scared that we will have less people like Knuth in our people, people who can…
on ““When are we going to use this in our everyday life?” (2017)” ↗…experiences from college where buying the used text book for Biology which was a 2nd edition and about 5 years old for probably $80. Then a couple of years later I was in Calculus I and the syllabus listed Thomas' Calculus (12th Edition) as the book. It was brand new just released so no used copies. Bookstore had it for $220 and the 11th edition for much cheaper. I took the risk and bought the 11th edition. I mean after…
on “More Than 600k Students and Teachers Use Z-Library” ↗I made the mistake of buying Thomas' Calculus after watching a lecture by Knuth where he lauded having Thomas as his teacher. My oh my is Thomas' Calculus not a book to teach yourself calculus with without lectures and seminars to guide you.
on “Calculus Made Easy (1910)” ↗…series [0]. They suggest a curriculum to start with prealgebra, move to algebra, then counting & probability, then geometry, then precalculus, and finally to calculus (though a regular calculus book like Thomas Calculus/Stewart Calculus/even Spivak/Apostol would work fine). The main advantage of these books are its focus on building intuition by visualizing shapes or immediately rephrasing notation (e.g. 4/2 is better…
on “Ask HN: I suck at math, where to start?” ↗…textbook mills. I also have sympathy for open source software authors that applied their creativity to create source code that is spit out verbatim by Copilot without adhering to license terms. I see that Thomas’ Calculus is up to the 14th edition, priced at about 20x the hourly wage that a college student will earn. Thomas and Finney Calculus editions 6 - 8 are on shelves or in boxes somewhere in my house. Each of those…
on “Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement” ↗…comment seriously: - re “couldn't afford professional typesetting”: Knuth was happy when Addison–Wesley approached him, specifically because he liked the high-quality typesetting of their books (like Thomas' Calculus) that he had used as a student. He was happy with the typesetting of the first editions of Vol 1 and 2, and only for the second edition, when the publishers moved from hot-metal typesetting to phototypesetting…
on “The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor” ↗