The importance of visualisation and multiple representations in mathematics has been stressed, especially in a context of problem solving. Hanna and Sidoli comment that "Diagrams and other visual representations have long been welcomed as heuristic accompaniments to proof, where they not only facilitate the understanding of theorems and their…

We present a concise, yet self-contained module for teaching the notion of area and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus for different groups of students. This module contains two different levels of rigour, depending on the class it used for. It also incorporates a technological component. (Contains 6 figures.)

This article suggests the introduction of the concepts of areas bounded by plane curves and the volumes of solids of revolution in Pre-calculus. It builds on the basic knowledge that students bring to a pre-calculus class, derives a few more formulas, and gives examples of some problems on plane areas and the volumes of solids of revolution that…

In the teaching of calculus, the algebraic derivation of the derivative (gradient function) enables the student to obtain an analytic "global" gradient function. However, to the best of this author's knowledge, all current technology-based approaches require the student to obtain the derivative (gradient) at a single point by…

A simple algorithm for computing the partial fraction expansions of proper rational functions with multiple poles is presented. The main idea is to use the Heaviside's cover-up technique to determine the numerators of the partial fractions and polynomial divisions to reduce the multiplicities of the poles involved successively, without the use of…

In this note, a modified Second Derivative Test is introduced for the relative extrema of a single variable function. This improved test overcomes the difficulty of the second derivative vanishing at the critical point, while in contrast the traditional test fails for this case. A proof for this improved Second Derivative Test is presented,…

Everyone with a thorough knowledge of single variable calculus knows that integration can be used to find the length of a curve on a given interval, called its arc length. Fortunately, if one endeavors to pose and solve more interesting problems than simply computing lengths of various curves, there are techniques available that do not require an…

We explore how curvature and torsion determine the shape of a curve via the Frenet-Serret formulas. The connection is made explicit using the existence of solutions to ordinary differential equations. We use a paperclip as a concrete, visual example and generate its graph in 3-space using a CAS. We also show how certain physical deformations to…

Developing students' ability to reason has long been a fundamental goal of mathematics education. A primary way in which mathematics students develop reasoning skills is by constructing mathematical proofs. This article presents a number of nontypical results, along with their proofs, that can be explored with students in any calculus classroom.…

The aim of this paper is to present a simple way of establishing the general solution of the linear, second-order differential equation without using complex numbers.

MATLAB is a powerful package for numerical computation. MATLAB contains a rich pool of mathematical functions and provides flexible plotting functions for illustrating mathematical solutions. The course of calculus-based business mathematics consists of two major topics: 1) derivative and its applications in business; and 2) integration and its…

The mean value theorem for differentials is basically a consequence of the fundamental theorem of calculus for Lebesgue integration.

This note offers a derivation of the Euler-Maclaurin formula that is simple and elementary. In addition, the paper shows that the derivation provides Euler-Maclaurin formulas for a variety of functionals other than the trapezoid rule.

When first-year calculus students are interested in studying double integrals, they can find, in standard textbooks, a detailed description of the different regions of integration. The aims of this paper are: to give a criterion to select the plane that will be projected, to classify the projections, and to give a simple rule to obtain them.…

The Bernoulli polynomials are generalized and some properties of the resulting generalizations are presented.