Help with calculus?

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vaderj
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2008 5:50 pm

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by vaderj »

while it is a little late to note .... the way (after my second go at calc in university) to grasp the basics of calc was to quit trying to memorize all the stupid rules .... the chain rule of course you need to know but the rest are all mental masturbation. the concept that i learned that really helped me though was figuring out the relationship between distance, velocity and acceleration (original function, 1st deriv. and 2nd deriv.) distance being how to define where f(x), say a particle/object after x amount of time, and such. of course i was 25 before i even took my first calc course. google and wikipedia helped me a lot because the math profs ive had here at NDSU are pretty much BANNED

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westfw
 
Posts: 2008
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by westfw »

I have all strait A's
Even in spelling? :-)
his test's have questions that arent even what we studied in class...
College will be like that :-( Think of your french class as training.

koolkat
 
Posts: 358
Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 8:42 pm

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by koolkat »

westfw wrote:
I have all strait A's
Even in spelling? :-)
his test's have questions that arent even what we studied in class...
College will be like that :-( Think of your french class as training.
I knew I spelled that wrong...I just didn't know how to spell it the right way...oh wait :-)

Tipp
 
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:54 pm

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by Tipp »

Derivatives are a major part of first year engineering at any college or university! Know them, live them, breathe them, love them! I've got some very useful tips for you that will help you dramatically. (I hope) :)

First off, when you need to study, the best place is actually YouTube! When someone pointed out all the instructional videos on YouTube to me, I couldn't believe I didn't think of looking there. Subscribe to this guy: http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy?ob=4

He's got video tutorials on everything you need, and I find they're really well explained. They've helped me more then my actual calculus classes.

For derivatives, start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAof9Ld5sOg There's 8 or 9 parts to the derivative's section; about an hour and a half total material. You'll learn more in that hour and a half then a month of classes. (At least, I did)

If there's something he does that you don't understand, he's probably got a video dedicated to that, too. He covers absolutely everything, and holds your hand along the way. Additionally, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of "Calculus for Dummies". You can find it at lots of bookstores, as it's part of the "Dummies" series that you see everywhere. Extremely helpful. It's about 20$, and worth every penny.

If you need any further help, feel free to contact me or hit me up on MSN. I don't bite :) I'd enjoy using my knowledge to help someone else.

Good luck in your studies! Remember that you're not alone; there are others suffering right alongside you. :wink:

magician13134
 
Posts: 1119
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:17 am

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by magician13134 »

Wow! I NEVER thought of YouTube OR the Dummies books!
It seems that most of my problems are stupid (STUPID!) things, just evaluating equations wrong, I'm used to using (ok... addicted to using) my calculator and we aren't allowed to use that (in calculus!) so that's actually been a rather large problem :(

Tipp
 
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:54 pm

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by Tipp »

Getting used to giving up your faithful Ti is difficult; I actually still use mine every so often to graph functions and see what they look like (Which is helpful when you start getting into long, painful functions that make your brain go splort). Cheers to the 'addiction' aspect of it! :)

"Stupid" mistakes are the worst, and everybody trips on them. Don't let them discourage you, they will come with practice. :)

magician13134
 
Posts: 1119
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:17 am

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by magician13134 »

Well, I got an 88% on the quiz today, a 12% increase from the last one... Better, but still not what I'd like to be getting

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westfw
 
Posts: 2008
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm

Re: Help with calculus?

Post by westfw »

"Fond" memories of the college "calculator allowed" physics, EE, and chemistry exams (using calculus), most of for which the calculator was entirely useless, the "math" being mostly symbolic...
(that was before graphing calculators. Being able to look at plots of curves... Hmm; a whole new ballpark...) :-)

Yeah, it sucks to get problems wrong because of stupid math mistakes. My daughter has that problem...

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