New Books In Mathematics

The book discussed in this interview is Everyday Calculus: Discovering the Hidden Math All around Us (Princeton University Press, 2014) by Oscar E. Fernandez, who teaches mathematics – and calculus in particular – at Wellesley College.  While it can be read by someone who wants to obtain a sense of what calculus is and how it’s used, it is even more enjoyable and enlightening if the reader has taken the first semester of a calculus course.  The author takes the reader through a day in the author’s life, during which things one typically encounters – stock price quotations, cooling cups of coffee, getting good seats at a movie – afford an opportunity to investigate how calculus explains these everyday occurrences.  Fernandez also introduces some instances where calculus has totally unexpected applications to our lives – why our GPS system relies upon Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and why we obtain electricity via alternating current rather than direct current.