I've been very interested in the book Concrete Mathematics (Graham,Knuth,Patashnik) and I've been reading it for the past few weeks.
I'm at the chapter about Sums (Chapter 2), specificaly, the lesson about Finite and Infinite Calculus. My question is if any serious calculus or advanced math background will be needed from this point on?
I'm going into 10th grade and the highest math I can take as a 10th grader is Precalculus (in my school at least), so anything I would want to do with calculus at school would have to wait until I'm in 11th grade.
I know a few topics about Calculus due to my own interest in the topic, but they've been entirely self-taught and no formal lecturing about them ( maybe this will hold me back?). I seem to understand this part of the book without too much difficulty, but should I first complete a Calculus course before moving on with the book and gather a firm background, or is it not needed?
Thanks!
Best Answer
You do not need calculus to understand the material on finite calculus; you’ll simply miss some of the analogies until you actually learn the calculus side of them. Most of the material through Section $5.3$ is also accessible without calculus, at least in principle, though some of it is far from easy. The same applies to much of Chapter $6$. On the whole I’d say that you should give it a try if you find it interesting (as I certainly would have done, had it existed when I was that age).