Never Meet Your Heroes: Why James Stewart's Bible of Multivariable Calculus Makes A Mistake Even If It's The Best Math Textbook I've Ever Read

There is a common phrase: "Never meet your heroes." I don't know the exact etymology of this phrase, but presumably this means they will disappoint whoever meets them and they turn out to be highly imperfect and flawed humans who present an amazing public image but if a person really gets to know them, or puts them under a microscope, a person will discover profound flaws. 

This happened to me yesterday - though metaphorically, not literally. I adore and love the book Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart. And I even recommended it on LinkedIn yesterday in response to a post about true mathematicians who can't read a math textbook without yelling at it. I guess that means I'm officially a mathematician. I was working through a problem on ordinary differential equations. 


This is like the mistake I caught at MIT. Forgive the tech issues, blogger refused to load my equations so I had to take a screenshot from Word. And Blogger/Google my blog suddenly isn't indexed, so please fix this! I'm also looking for serious math/physics mentors who can mentor someone who is still a beginner but yells at textbooks and has been said to function at the level of a post-grad in math. I'm mostly self taught. 


-Cortelyou C. Kenney, 7/10/25 (1:04 am PT)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rage is natural, but ultimately less effective than being loving

               My background as a future doctrinal law professor has been, shall I say, circuitous. This is my second career, and my prior career was as a social justice warrior and clinician. Clinicians are deeply and badly needed in this world, and while I once regretted my decision to pursue a doctrinal path and would have given anything to go back in time to highly specific moments, like the protagonist in the science fiction movie,  The Time Traveler’s Wife   (though I’m a woman and not a man, and I’m an academic, not a librarian), I don’t regret and will never regret it, though if I’d known what it would have involved and could have foreseen each and every aspect of my journey, no force on the entire planet could have compelled me to go through with it, unless of course I was compelled by the laws of spacetime itself.  I leave the specific question of time, a deep interest of mine, to another moment. There are many wise p...
Read more

Why Mary Anne Franks Is the Single Best First Amendment Scholar In the Country, But Why Feminism Also Needs A Huge Update From The Perspective of Game Theory, Math, and Physics

              Today's post is lengthy personal essay and book review and is about the First Amendment and feminism, and why feminist scholars like Mary Anne Franks put the entire scholarly community to shame for being simply outstanding in every conceivable way. But while I stand with Mary Anne Franks and the entirety of her new book, in my view feminism in the end should yield to other more important values, including curiosity, love, forgiveness, spirituality, and belonging, though I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, by definition, although I can call on the whole world to adopt my values, for the reasons I explain in this TLDR post below. Main point: Franks in my view should be able to go wherever she likes, but I also conclude feminism is insufficient and must be problematized from the perspective of game theory.  A.      Frank’s Book: I’m privileged to personally know many of the top ...
Read more

Why Versus How? Physics, Feminism, And Shifting Perspective: A Reflection.

Image
Many years ago, I was a “why” person. In fact, I’m still a “why” person and I always want to know why things are the way they are because if the reason isn’t good, then something (like rules) may have to change. I used to pester my parents, and ask “why, why, why” about basically anything in any subject, and my parents, who were educated, my Dad at the University of Chicago, and my Mom at Oberlin with an actual PhD at UC Berkeley, did their best to answer my questions. However, in the end, my tiny five-year-old self stumped them routinely and they would eventually run out of answers. Asking “why” is one of my favorite techniques, not to disrespect boundaries because obviously “no” in many contexts is a full and complete answer and no one has to justify, for example, not requiting romantic interest. But if the legal system is built on making sense, then laws  ought  to have sound justifications for why rules or laws exist.  My life’s work actually started well before I was...
Read more