Tal Cohen's Bookshelf: A Collection of Personal Opinions about Books
Book In-Jokes in...
Calculus
Find this book

 
by G. B. Thomas and R. L. Finney
(Ninth Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1996)

The index includes an entry for whales, pointing to pages 365 ff. These pages include no mention of whales (they deal with applications of integrals); but there are several graphs there that look remarkably like whales.

It seems like this in-joke first appeared in the sixth edition; thanks to Dave Collins and Anton Sherwood who helped confirm this. The joke can also be found in the authors' Calculus and Analytic Geometry, Part I.

Thanks to Greg Friedman for contributing this entry.
[Added 2000-01-01]
[Permalink to this entry]   [See more book in-jokes]   [Fold all comments]   [Unfold all comments]


Dave Collins writes:

I have edition 6 and it has the joke
[49] Posted on Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 0:56 GMT [Permalink]


lgeralds writes:

It's in the 7th also.
[50] Posted on Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 0:59 GMT [Permalink]


peterb writes:

It is also in the 4th Edition (1968).
Wales, 188.
[51] Posted on Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 1:49 GMT [Permalink]


peterb writes in reply to peterb:

... I mean in the ''Calculus and Analytic Geometry'', 4th Edition.
[52] Posted on Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 1:51 GMT [Permalink]


Tal Cohen writes:
Not in 3e
A long while ago, Dale Beihoffer was kind enough to inform me ''[his] copy of Calculus and Analytic Geometry by G.B. Thomas is the third edition (1960). The index contains no reference to whales, but p. 223 contains two whale-resembling graphs that must be the ones referred to in later editions.''
[199] Posted on Saturday, 12 May 2007 at 16:33 GMT [Permalink]


Tal Cohen writes:
This page blocked for comments
Due to an unreasonable amount of spam directed at this page specifically, I have disabled replies for this particular page (only).

If you would like to add a comment to this page, please email it to me. (Make sure you include the keyword ''bookshelf'' in the subject, to bypass my spam filters.)
[291] Posted on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 at 13:22 GMT [Permalink]

[Post a comment on this entery]   [Back to Main Page]
©1997-2022 by Tal Cohen, all rights reserved. [About]