Learning Calculus

I never took calculus in high school. And, I'm embarrassed to say, they never asked me to do anything more complicated than dividing fractions in college. As a result, I've never had even the slightest understanding of the fundamentals of calculus and it has driven me crazy for years.

Most people think that I'm nuts when I cry foul over never having to take calculus. They usually say something like, "you don't use it in everyday life," or, "it's too hard to be useful." But for me, the allure of calculus was never about utility or difficulty. It's always been about seeing the world in a new way, learning to overcome a new challenge, and growing a more comprehensive understanding of everything - really beautiful stuff.

Okay, so maybe I am a little nuts.

Either way, I've started to teach myself calculus. I bought a used textbook from a crusty little bookshop and got a series of college level lectures on DVD from my local library. And things have been going pretty well so far. I do some exercises. I watch some lectures. I check my answers in the back of the book and make nice, neat, little graphs.

Now why am I telling you all this?

The process of learning calculus is not unlike the process learning to be a better parent.

Both can be maddeningly complex for the first-timer. Both require a lot of effort and deliberate thought. Both are based around a few precepts or core ideas. Both change the way you look at the world. But more than anything else, both are totally within the grasp of a normal person and require only hard work and persistence to obtain.

More people grow as parents than they do as math learners because their kids pretty much force them to. If you suck at diapering a baby, they will howl at you until you get it right whether it's morning, noon, or night. Class is never dismissed. And, since we usually grow in areas that we feel are important to us, we become better parents because we know our kids are worth the effort. We grow as math learners only if we are able to see importance (i.e. beautiful stuff) in what we are doing.

What's the moral of the story?

The best way to improve at something is not to get smarter or more talented. It's to appreciate what you do and to know that, like all things, practice makes perfect.

Well, maybe not perfect. After all, "perfect" is an unattainable abstraction like "infinity." But as I've learned in my studies of calculus, you can whittle away at a perfect infinity until it almost doesn't matter anymore.

Far out.