The Six Pillars of Calculus

A Road Map

Calculus is generally viewed as a difficult subject, with hundreds of formulas to memorize and many applications to the real world. However, almost all of calculus boils down to six basic ideas, together with one precalculus idea. If you really understand these ideas, the formulas will come easily. If you don't understand these ideas, the formulas won't make any sense. We'll develop some of the ideas slowly. In M408K and M408N we cover Pillars 1-5. M408L and M408S start with Pillar 5 and run with it, and then go back to Pillar 1 for sequences and series, before finishing with Pillar 6 for partial derivatives and multiple integrals. M408M is all about Pillar 6. Before we get bogged down in the details, let's see what the pillars actually are.