No label defined (Q4527709)

Hundreds, if not thousands of textbooks of Introductory Analysis were published in the last 50 years, but despite this fact the teaching of this course is still, on many cases, a failure. Trying to propose a remedy to this situation, the author wrote this book ``with the future teacher of calculus in mind, but it is also designed to serve as a bridge between a traditional calculus sequence and later courses on real or numerical analysis \([\dots]\). It deals with derivations and justifications instead of calculations and illustrations, with examples showing the need for hypotheses as well as cases in which they are satisfied \([\dots]\). Instead of the definition-theorem-proof format often used in sophisticated mathematical expositions, we try to see how the definitions evolve to make further developments possible. The rigor is present, but the formality is avoided as much as possible''. To these statements made in the Preface, we should add that the author satisfies to a large extent his promises (but this fact is not at all a guarantee that analysis will become a very attractive topic). First of all, his textbook has only 200 normal pages covering all basic topics, in a rather unusual order: the real number system; continuous functions; limits; the derivative; the Riemann integral; exponential and logarithmic functions; curves and arc length; sequences and series of functions; additional computational methods. Another very positive feature of this book is the right balance between natural language, on the one hand, and mathematical symbolism, on the other hand. This fact is related to the case shown for motivations of the concepts, explanation of the proofs and the ideas behind various mathematical strategies. The author succeeds to give ``a deeper view of calculus'' (the subtitle of the book) in a way combining logic and intuition, empirical and theoretical arguments.