Saturday
Sep082012
Calculus-Help.com Fund Raiser: Buy a Signed TI-nSpire Calculator to Support the Website
Saturday, September 8, 2012 at 09:08AM 
Up for sale is a TI-n spire calculator owned and signed by by W. Michael Kelley, the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Calculus and The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems. Is Kelley famous? No. Does the signature actually add any monetary value to the auction? No. In fact, like graffiti, it may actually devalue the sale. That's a chance we're willing to take in a fund raiser to reboot Calculus-Help.com for the new school year: http://www.ebay.com/itm/140846256145.
Every day Mike gets a ton of email from people practically begging to buy advertisements on his site. Actual begging. We feel sorry for these people, because what they don't know is that Mike made a (probably very short-sighted) pledge to never sell ads on the site for any reason. "But can't we just throw money at you?" they ask, usually in the form of impersonal spam. "No," Mike says. "I must hold to a promise, a sacred covenant, that I sometimes really regret making." For those of you thinking, "Sure, there's no advertising, but practically every page is an ad for Mike's books. Doesn't that count as advertising?" understand that I am staring at you with a squinty stare, telepathically asking you to kindly put a sock in it, because you're embarrassing me in front of my new friends--friends that could potentially buy the calculator I ruined by signing it with a silver Sharpie.
To help keep the site free, Mike is auctioning off this calculator, which is lightly used, but it contains all the important pieces (like connection cables, the manuals, an alternate TI-84 face plate (let your dork flag fly) and is in incredible shape. It works like a charm, as you can see by the mundane and meaningless calculations I took a picture of. In case you were wondering if this complicated piece of machinery can add, the answer is a resounding YES! (I may or may not have utilized the full power of this guy.)
Reader Comments (1)
Dear Mr. Kelley,
Am retired graduate Civil Engineer (78 years old now) and decided to review Calculus that I took in the 50's. I got your book "Complete Idiots Gude...Calculus 2nd Edition" from the library and thoroughly enjoying it thus far, though unfamiliar in solving cubic equations.
Am now in Chapter 17 and trying to solve Problem #2, p.191. I can get the answer via u-substitution, while utilizing long division of which I do get 1 + 4/(2x-3), but upon integrating this I don't understand how it becomes x + 2ln(2x-3) + C which is this answer in u-substitution.
I would appreciate your response as your time permits
Geot