I abandoned the assigned problems in standard calculus textbooks and followed my curiosity. Wherever I happened to be–a Vegas casino, Disneyland, surfing in Hawaii, or sweating on the elliptical in Boesel’s Green Microgym–I asked myself,...

I will never listen to ocean waves or view a beautiful sunset in quite the same way again. That is perhaps the greatest gift one can gain by delving into calculus: It is a whole...

I think scientists have a valid point when they bemoan the fact that it’s socially acceptable in our culture to be utterly ignorant of math, whereas it is a shameful thing to be illiterate.

… I succeeded at math, at least by the usual evaluation criteria: grades. Yet while I might have earned top marks in geometry and algebra, I was merely following memorized rules, plugging in numbers and...