The house that calculus built

Or make that the house that the house that Calculus: Early Transcendentals and Calculus: Concepts and Contexts built. And more books too, all in multiple editions!

A few days ago The Toronto Star's Katie Daubs published an article on the home of James Stewart, the Toronto resident who wrote all those calculus textbooks.

James Stewart is a calculus rock star.

When he goes on book tours in China, they ask for his autograph. In Toronto, the city's movers and shakers gather at his home for concerts. People have drunkenly stumbled into his infinity pool.

Stewart's 18,000-square-foot home, named Integral House, is an architectural marvel. It has five floors, a concert space and a stairwell ensconced in handblown blue glass, his favourite colour. The house is filled with gadgets. Stewart delights in showing them off, including the wall to wall blinds that block out the sun with a push of a button in his treetop bedroom.

Check it out. The article has a lot more detail on Stewart's house as well as a bunch of really cool pictures.

Equally interesting are the (as of this moment) 45 comments on the piece. A lot of discussion about math, textbooks, money, ostentatious houses and more.

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