Noriko is just getting started as a junior reporter for the Asagake Times. She’ll get her chance at journalistic fame and glory, but she’ll only succeed with some mathematical guidance from Mr. Seki, her overbearing and analytical boss.

In The Manga Guide to Calculus, the fifth title in the highly-acclaimed Manga Guide series from No Starch Press, readers follow Noriko as she discovers that calculus is more than just a tough class. As the book’s story unfolds, the learning takes place almost painlessly, with the reader sitting in on a series of comic-illustrated lessons.

Mr. Seki teaches the basics of calculus using real-world examples like probability, supply and demand curves, the economics of pollution, and the density of shochu (a Japanese liquor). Noriko struggles but ultimately prevails, as does the reader.

“I’m excited about the fifth title in our Manga Guide series. Calculus is essential for almost any scientific endeavor, no matter how small,” said No Starch Press founder Bill Pollock. “Whether you’re a budding scientist or just a struggling high-schooler, you have to know calculus. But many people assume that calculus is too difficult, intense, or tedious for them to even attempt. Not any more.”

In The Manga Guide to Calculus, readers learn how to:

• Use differentiation to understand a function’s rate of change
• Apply the fundamental theorem of calculus, and grasp the relationship between a function’s derivative and its integral
• Integrate and differentiate trigonometric and other complicated functions
• Use multivariate calculus and partial differentiation to deal with tricky functions
• Use Taylor Expansions to accurately imitate difficult functions with polynomials

Calculus doesn’t have to be difficult or dull. The Manga Guide to Calculus gives readers an entertaining and thorough introduction to this indispensable discipline.