Learn Calculus with Python

See calculus in action with Python, visualization, and real-world applications.

Maybe you took calculus once. Maybe you remember derivatives, integrals, and something about the slope of a tangent line. Did any of it make sense?

Learn Calculus with Python puts calculus in motion. You see what a derivative does before you learn the rule for it.

You'll write simple Python programs, experiment in Jupyter Notebooks, and watch mathematical ideas unfold on screen. You start by programming a virtual turtle, and as you shrink its steps you arrive at limits, derivatives, integrals, and finally the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Throughout the book you move between the math and approximations you can run, and each side makes the other clearer.

Once the fundamentals are solid, the second half takes you into the tools applied mathematicians reach for most. You'll model supply and demand with derivatives. Simulate swarming behavior with differential equations. Transform geometry with linear algebra. Watch a dynamical system tip into chaos. Build a neural network and its backpropagation from scratch. Take apart signals with Fourier transforms. More than 200 exercises give you room to tinker.

If calculus has always felt like a bag of mysterious rules, this is where you find out what those rules describe.

Run the code. Watch the math move.

Requires basic algebra and geometry (an appendix covers what you need). No programming experience required.