Description

Aimed at readers who may be more familiar with statistics than calculus and mathematics, this carefully written volume gives an overview of the central ideas in calculus. Author Gudmund R. Iversen shows examples of how calculus is used to translate many real-world phenomena into mathematical functions. Beginning with an explanation of the two major parts of calculus, differentiation and integration, Iversen illustrates how calculus is used in statistics to distinguish between the mean and the median, to derive the least squares formulas for regression coefficients, to find values of parameters from theoretical distributions, and to find a statistical p value when we using one of the continuous test variables like the t variable. Social scientists who either never took a calculus course or who want to "brush up" on their understanding of calculus will find this book a necessity.