The page you are reading is part of a draft (v2.0) of the "No bullshit guide to math and physics."

The text has since gone through many edits and is now available in print and electronic format. The current edition of the book is v4.0, which is a substantial improvement in terms of content and language (I hired a professional editor) from the draft version.

I'm leaving the old wiki content up for the time being, but I highly engourage you to check out the finished book. You can check out an extended preview here (PDF, 106 pages, 5MB).


Introduction

Wassup? I have some stuff to teach you about math and physics. It is all easy stuff when you break it down into small pieces. The real art is in connecting the pieces so they make sense.

Calculus and mechanics are often taught as separate subjects. It shouldn't be like that. If you learn calculus without mechanics, it will be boring. If you learn physics without calculus, you won't truly understand.

Now you are probably wondering: “why do I need to know that stuff? Can't I just memorize some formulas?” No. If you don't understand what is going on, you are cooked on the word questions. Besides, you would be missing out on all the knowledge buzz you will get from learning new things.

Ok. So are you still with me? I mean ultimately knowledge is only for those who insist on knowing. I can't force you to understand math and physics properly. I can throw a thousand definitions, formulas and proofs at you, but if you are not interested in truly understanding, then I can't help you. You can try to do your own thing, like memorize plenty of exercise solutions and hope that the problems on the final look similar. Pattern matching. Go for that instead if you are too chicken to learn the real stuff.

If you consider yourself to be part of the “twitter generation” and you think that having an attention span of 5 minutes is you unalienable right, then you might want to stay away from this book. Some sections are 6 pages long, and you will have to concentrate for, like, half an hour or maybe even more if you want to practice exercises. Are you ready for this?

Ok wow. Fifth paragraph! You really are interested in this math stuff aren't you? Having read so far you are now asking “WTF? Is this guy going to start teaching already or what?”, and I am.

This book is structured in three parts:

  1. The first chapter is a review of high school math explained in a succinct manner.

You might want to flip through these pages to review the concepts.

  Nothing fancy there, but it is extremely important to grasp
  the basics well. What is $\sin(0)?$ What is $\sin(\pi/4)$? 
  What does the graph of $\sin(x)$ look like? 
  Arts students interested in enriching their culture with knowledge that
  is 2000+ years old can read this chapter as
  therapy to recover from any damaging educational experiences they may
  have had with mathematics in high school.
- In the second chapter the we will introduce some important
  equations from physics: the equations for uniformly accelerated motion.
  We will dig into the equation and show how it arises from two
  simple calculus steps.
- The third chapter is about vectors. Vectors are good for you.
- The fourth chapter all about Mechanics: projectile motion, forces, energy, waves.
  Science students who "hate" physics, but have to take these courses
  can learn how to use the 40 or so equations and laws of "classical physics".
  If you know math, then physics is quite simple actually -- you will see.
- The next part consists of the material commonly taught 
  in the university courses "Differential Calculus" and "Integral Calculus".
  Science students that have to take these courses will find
  that 100 pages are enough to learn all the important concepts.
  You will save yourself lots of time if you read minireference instead of Stewart.
- The course Electricity optics, circuits, and electromagnetism.
- The last chapter is about linear algebra.  
 
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