Discover Calculus
LightNews LightNews
banner
discovercalculus.com
Discover Calculus
@discovercalculus.com
45 followers 7 following 22 posts
An open copyright, online textbook for single variable calculus with a discovery-based perspective from @mathprofpeter.bsky.social. We build the big ideas together through guided and interactive activities.

www.discovercalculus.com | (WIP)
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
discovercalculus.com
Discover Calculus @discovercalculus.com · Mar 14
This book is free from any content generated from, built by, or influenced by Large Language Models and/or generative AI products.
Disclosure about the Use of AI This book has been lovingly written by a human. Me. Peter Keep. I have used a lot of different tools, both for inspiration and for actually creating resources for this book. None of those tools has involved any form of generative AI. I could list all of the ways that I think using generative AI in education is, at minimum, problematic. More pointedly, I believe that it is unethical. More broadly, I believe that the use of generative AI for any use-case that I have encountered to be unethical. In my classes, I try to help students realize the joy and value of working at something and creating something and struggling with something and knowing something. Giving worth to something, even an imperfect thing. Celebrating our accomplishments, even when (especially when?) there is room to grow in those accomplishments. And so I have taken that advice in the creation of this book. I have created a book that is definitely not perfect. I have struggled to write it. There are parts of it that could be (need to be) improved. But I was the one that created it. I struggled with it. I know it. I hope that this book can also be a useful tool for others to use, and I have left the copyright to be about as open as possible. Others can take this, use it, can change it, add to it, subtract from it, etc. In leaving this copyright open for others to change this book, I cannot guarantee that every version of this book is free from the mindless and joyless output from some Large Language Model. But I want to leave this note up in hopes that anyone who does inject some output from some generative AI product into this book will take it down. If this note, or some statement similar to it, is not present in the version of the book you are accessing, please be cautious. Find a different calculus textbook to read! Find something written by a human. Find the words of some other mathematician who tries, maybe imperfectly, to share the ideas of calculus.
discovercalculus.com
Ok quick, is writing a "practice problem" that guides students through re-creating Euler's proof that the sum of reciprocal squares converges to π²/6 unhinged, yes or no?
#MathSky
#iTeachMath
November 24, 2025 at 4:02 AM
discovercalculus.com
Even though the text itself is (mostly) finished, there are still lots of things to add! Textbooks *should* be good teaching and learning resources, so this one will have lots of extras to share with people to use (or change) as they want!

#MathSky 🧮
#iTeachMath
Pixel book logo with links underneath: Home Read Online Other Downloads Instructor Resources On the right is the following text: Instructor Resources Python Demonstrations These python notebooks are hosted on Google Colab, with no python installations necessary. Each notebook demonstrates some concept from the text, and are suitable for in-class demonstrations or out-of-class explorations. These python notebooks have a mixture of pre-written code and text instructions and explanations, making them useful even without much (or any!) python background. Images and Animations There are many images and animations included in the text already, but several interesting relevant examples have not been included. These can still be used in classes for additional explanation or small deviations from the specific content in the text. Doenet Interactives Interactive Doenet elements are included throughout this text, whether in the activities or in the exposition between student explorations. Source code for all of these interactive elements can be found on the Doenet website. The source code for all of these can also be found in the Github repository for this text, but the Doenet website includes a free editor, making it easy to edit or copy any of these interactive elements.
November 22, 2025 at 9:10 PM
discovercalculus.com
Here's a cool proof-of-concept that happened recently. I missed some class time recently with conference travel, and instead of falling behind I sent some instructions to students on what to read about while we cancelled class. I figured I'd have to make it up in class still, like normal.
🧮 #MathSky
November 21, 2025 at 11:46 PM
discovercalculus.com
It's done!
(For now)
October 31, 2025 at 3:53 PM
discovercalculus.com
These triangles—used to demonstrate how to think about d/dθ sin(θ)=cos(θ) and d/dθ cos(θ)=-sin(θ)—are better than the other triangles—used to show the limit as θ→0 of sin(θ)/θ = 1, which you would then use to show d/dθ sin(θ)=cos(θ) and d/dθ cos(θ)=-sin(θ).

It's all about which triangles to show.
A triangle on a unit circle, with standard lengths 1, sin(theta), and cos(theta). Another point is labeled on the unit circle. There is a triangle formed by the line connecting the two points, and then the vertical and horizontal components of the distance between the two points. The vertical distance is labeled sin(theta+Delta theta)-sin(theta) and the horizontal distance is labeled cos(theta)-cos(theta+Delta theta). The hypotenuse is labeled h, but it is very close to the same as the arclength between the two points, labeled Delta theta.
September 7, 2025 at 1:23 AM
discovercalculus.com
I'm going to be giving a talk about accessibility, OER, and general updates on this project soon, and couldn't help but include this slide.

I'm going to also need to work in this statement in the quoted post about resisting LLMs and generative AI.

Should be fun!
A slide with a dark gradient background from a dark grey color to a green color. In white, the text on the top says "Why not just use MS Word?" In gold below it, the text says "Because it's terrible."
July 24, 2025 at 5:49 PM
discovercalculus.com
We should explicit about what mathematics *is*, even (especially?) in courses that are largely students not majoring in math. So we can (1) remind students why we impose conditions or restrictions for certain results and (2) explore removing those conditions or restrictions.
#MathSky 🧮
#iTeachMath
8.5 Alternating Series and Conditional Convergence Before we move too far forward, let’s circle back to a point made in Subsection 8.4.3 Why Do We Need These Conditions?. In the Integral Test, we required the terms of our series (and the continuous function we connected it with) to be positive. This was really just a mechanism that allowed us to say, in our proof, that the sequence of partial sums was monotonic. When we accumulate more of a positive thing, the total gets bigger. This is half of what we needed for us to employ the Monotone Convergence Theorem. Because this is such a useful tool, we’ll see more of this "positive term series" condition showing up in the tools we use to see if a series converges. But that makes this a perfect time to stop and ask a hallowed mathematical question: What happens if that property isn’t there? What happens when our series does not only have positive terms?
July 24, 2025 at 2:58 PM
discovercalculus.com
Here are some of the kinds of visuals that I've been working on! You can see a mix of interactive plots (in the first 2 images) as well as images made to demonstrate some typical calculus tasks (the 3rd image) and some more generic figures describing processes (the last one).

#MathSky 🧮
#iTeachMath
A graph of a function with a two points, and a line connecting them. From each point is a faint line to the y-axis and a faint line to the x-axis. The distance between these lines on the x-axis is shaded orange and labeled Delta x. The vertical distance on the y-axis is also orange and is labeled f(x+Delta x)-f(x). Two graphs on different axes. The first is a red graph with a point somewhere between x=1 and x=2. The point is labeled (x,g(x)), and the area between the curve and the x-axis from x=0 up to that point is shaded in. Part of this area is above the x-axis, and the part closest to the point is below. The second graph is a blue graph with a point between x=1 and x=2. The point has a red tangent line, pointing downwards. A 3-dimensional solid of revolution formed by a curve above the x-axis being revolved around the x-axis. The solid is approximated by a bunch of thin disks, stacked next to each other. Two rectangles, one labeled "x Context" and the other, beside it, labeled "theta Context." Inside the "x Context" rectangle is an integral of f(x) dx with an arrow pointing towards F(x)+C. Inside the "theta Context" rectangle is an integral of g(theta) d theta with an arrow pointing towards G(theta)+C. There is an arrow connecting the integral of f(x) dx in the first rectangle to the integral of g(theta) d theta labeled x=T(theta) and dx = T'(theta) d theta. Then there is an arrow connecting G(theta)+C to F(x)+C labeled x = T(theta)
July 3, 2025 at 9:54 PM
discovercalculus.com
Students should know that definitions are choices, and these choices should come with both reasons for making them and an exploration of the consequences of those choices.
We’re going to now deal with the consequences of our decisions. A truth about mathematics, sometimes not an obvious truth, is that every time we state a definition what we are actually doing is making a decision. We are deciding on some common way of classifying and describing an object. These classifications and descriptions are choices that we are making: choices to prioritize some property or aspect over a different one, choices to include or exclude a type of object into the group of things we’re interested in, choices that come with downstream effects. We chose to define the area bounded between a curve defined by the function f(x) and the x-axis between x=a and x=b as: integral from x=a to x=b of f(x) dx = limit as n to infinity sum from k=1 to n of f(x_k^*) delta x. We are going to stand by this definition. It’s a good one, for the reasons we described at the beginning of Section 5.2 Riemann Sums and Area Approximations. But there are some weird things to notice. Let’s notice them!
May 23, 2025 at 10:29 PM
discovercalculus.com
I'm trying to build careful interactive elements for this book that will help students discover most of the ideas of calculus for themselves. Can you see how we'll bring this back around later on to discover the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus?
April 12, 2025 at 3:06 AM
discovercalculus.com
This book is free from any content generated from, built by, or influenced by Large Language Models and/or generative AI products.
Disclosure about the Use of AI This book has been lovingly written by a human. Me. Peter Keep. I have used a lot of different tools, both for inspiration and for actually creating resources for this book. None of those tools has involved any form of generative AI. I could list all of the ways that I think using generative AI in education is, at minimum, problematic. More pointedly, I believe that it is unethical. More broadly, I believe that the use of generative AI for any use-case that I have encountered to be unethical. In my classes, I try to help students realize the joy and value of working at something and creating something and struggling with something and knowing something. Giving worth to something, even an imperfect thing. Celebrating our accomplishments, even when (especially when?) there is room to grow in those accomplishments. And so I have taken that advice in the creation of this book. I have created a book that is definitely not perfect. I have struggled to write it. There are parts of it that could be (need to be) improved. But I was the one that created it. I struggled with it. I know it. I hope that this book can also be a useful tool for others to use, and I have left the copyright to be about as open as possible. Others can take this, use it, can change it, add to it, subtract from it, etc. In leaving this copyright open for others to change this book, I cannot guarantee that every version of this book is free from the mindless and joyless output from some Large Language Model. But I want to leave this note up in hopes that anyone who does inject some output from some generative AI product into this book will take it down. If this note, or some statement similar to it, is not present in the version of the book you are accessing, please be cautious. Find a different calculus textbook to read! Find something written by a human. Find the words of some other mathematician who tries, maybe imperfectly, to share the ideas of calculus.
March 14, 2025 at 3:48 AM