From Pythagoreans and Weierstrassians to true infinitesimal calculus
History and Overview
2017-02-03 v1 Classical Analysis and ODEs
Logic
Abstract
In teaching infinitesimal calculus we sought to present basic concepts like continuity and convergence by comparing and contrasting various definitions, rather than presenting "the definition" to the students as a monolithic absolute. We hope that this could be useful to other instructors wishing to follow this method of instruction. A poll run at the conclusion of the course indicates that students tend to favor infinitesimal definitions over epsilon, delta ones.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1701.05187,
title = {From Pythagoreans and Weierstrassians to true infinitesimal calculus},
author = {Mikhail G. Katz and Luie Polev},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.05187},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
15 pages, to appear in Humanistic Mathematics