Calculus

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Ah, calculus. I failed it miserably. But, later in life, I began to realize what it was about: how much something changes and how fast. That's, like, it. Newton rules.

I don't believe calculus is any harder to perform than algebra. Similar to algebra and most other mathematics, calculus consist of explicit, well defined rules. All you have to do is follow those rules. What is hard about calculus is understanding it. An understanding of calculus can not be obtained soley by lecture or reading textbooks, instead understaning comes to most people by doing lots and lots of problems.

It can be very frusterating to do lots and lots of problems when you don't understand why you're doing these problems, but follow the rules, do lots of problems, and with time, you will gain and understanding. But it is only with lots of time and lots of practice problems that you will ever get an understanding.

I think so many people fail calculus because they get stuck in a sort of catch 22. They don't do lots of practice problems because they don't understand, but they don't understand because they don't do lots of practice problems. The key to learning calculus is not above average intelligence, but above average perseverence!

I completed calc I three years ago. I've also completed calc II and III, differential equations, linear algebra, numerical methods, and several engineering courses that were based on calculus. And only now, after three additional years of application (and lots more practice problems) am I finally starting to get a true understanding of the material from calc I.

Don't expect to understand calculus overnite, or over a semster, or even over a year of hard study. But be willing to persist even though you don't understand, just keep following the rules. And eventually the understanding will come.

I'm in calculus II and I will find it hard, if not impossible, to succeed that calculus II if I don't date the right girl as soon as I can. Even if I succeeded calculus I with 86% it does not guarantee anything about calculus II.

The right girl, for me, is one that has more ability for integral calculus (differential calculus is not much of a problem) than I have. A failure here and I would HAVE to forsake my mathematical life (and, by extension, scientific as well).

I'd agree that Calc II is harder than Calc I, and I think that taking it during the summer is not a bad idea, as you can concentrate on just that one class.

As for why it is so hard, I'd say that series (Maclaurin and Taylor Series) are probably the hardest part conceptually. The rest of the course, namely integration by parts, trig substitutions, partial fractions, and even finding the volume of solids by integration really just involve a lot of algebraic manipulations. If you could get yourself used to the quotient rule for derivatives, you probably can get yourself used to these types of problems.

As for series, they really aren't as useful as they used to be, because calculators can do "infinite" summations for you, so there's not need to go the series mess to find an infinite sum. But as usual, math classes are behind the times.

Don't forget about Leibniz. He has feelings, too.

Wait..what? Do you need the girl to help you with calculus? Couldn't you just get a tutor for the subject?





Yeah, especially considering that it is Leibniz's method of notation in calculus that we use to this day. I hear it has more relevancy.

A tutor is one thing but I forgot to talk about my heartbreak problem: the solution to both my problems is to date a girl that is better and more advanced than I am (preferably one with some knowledge of multi-variable calculus, even if I'm still stuck in the single-variable calculus).

My heartbreak problem came before my mathematical issues, but since I was ailing at the start of calculus I, I told myself that I cannot resolve my heart-break without looking for a girl by myself (i.e. more skill and knowledge of calculus is absolutely necessary for me to succeed in love).

I want to go in Physics when I'm going to university but I have to fulfill either of these romance goals or else I may become mad and be forced to go to the hospital:

1: Have enough mathematical ability for any girl to fall in love with me, as an indirect result

OR

2: Date a girl that is better and more advanced than I am

That seems like an odd criteria. Wouldn't it be more practical just to find a person with similar interests?

I'm in Calculus right now (high school, not college), and I am horrible at it. I did really good in every math class until I hit pre-cal (C first semester, B second semester), and I'm doing dreadful in Calculus right now. It's my last year of math luckily, and I'm not majoring in either FIlm Production, History, or Psychology so math shouldn't be too hard for me in college.

yeah Newton used dot notation which was pretty inconvenient; but it worked for him, which is all that mattered.

Leibniz had to ask Newton about the binomial expansion being expanded to fractions and how he discovered it. GO Newton!! !

Leibniz was a master of lots of trades though.

At my college, I had also heard that Calc II was the most difficult out of Calc I, II, and III. I took AP Calculus BC in high school, and I skipped straight to Calc III in college. It wasn't a huge jump, and Calc III wasn't terribly hard. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't take Calc II. It's now become useless because I'm not a mathematics, engineering, or chemistry/physics major.

Well, it should be noted that different Calc IIs are different. I want to bet that your school is running things more or less like my school (differential and integral calculus both covered in Calc I), and I remember a lot of people being very disgruntled at how difficult Calc II was when I took it, so you should be careful. There is a lot of memorization, IIRC, so above all else you're gonna need to learn the theorems and formulae. That's mistake number one that people made in my class.

Overall, I didn't care much for the Calculus; I hate tedious equation solving etc. Very easy to screw it up as it gets more involved.

My impression was that Calc I generally covers differentiation through basic integration, and Calc II covers volumes of solids by integration, integration by parts, trig substitutions, partial fractions, as well as sequences/series. Were things different at your school?

This is how my school does it. Calculus I is mostly differentiation and a brief introduction to integration, where as Calculus II focuses on integration.

As of about 6:45 this morning, I am registered for the three four-week summer semesters for precalculus, calculus I, and calculus II.

That's exactly how we did it. Though I've heard (but perhaps misinterpreted) that sometimes differential calculus is sometimes split from integral. Hmmm. Maybe I was just not remembering correctly how much integration we did in Calc I. Blast this brain and autobiographical memories...

Good luck Phagocyte! After getting summarily pwned by some idiotic Calc II stuff in my Advanced Calculus test today, I can testify to the importinance of learning it right