Perhaps next time teachers head towards the fundamental theorem of calculus in their classroom, they may wish to consider Fermat's technique of finding expressions for areas under curves, beautifully outlined in Boyer's History of Mathematics. Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) developed some important results in the journey toward the discovery of the…

The author of this article, while recently working through some problem sets on determining volumes by triple integrals in cylindrical and spherical coordinate systems, realized that, although the textbook he was using included many interesting problems involving spheres, cylinders and cones and the increasingly complex solids that arose from the…

This article presents two classroom episodes in which students were exposed to the value of asking questions and to the different roles played by proof in mathematics. The conversation in the two episodes is outlined in the article. The setting was a classroom of fifteen good high-school students, who were studying calculus. These episodes…