So I'm in university, and this is my first time taking calculus...ever. I didn't take calculus in high school. Anyways, I find the course difficult. I tried watching some khan academy videos, but they weren't of that much help. Any other online sources that would help me out?
Did you take Pre-Cal? If not, this won't get any easier as the semester progresses or the next few times around. Aren't all Math classes Pearson enabled nowadays, with the online problems and practice examples?
its a customized book specifically made for the math course at my university. it could be by pearson though, i don't recall...
yeah, it think it is a pearson book. and i did take pre cal, but my teacher was horrendous, and thus, i didn't learn anything. that was 3 years ago though.
So its beginning to make sense, why you don't like Breaking Bad, you 're just not very smart. Just kidding, kind of. Go back and take pre-cal it really is the only thing to do. If you don't have proper background for a math course, it is very hard to do well in class. Not impossible, but very difficult.
Go to your professors office hours and use their TA's to your advantage. They're there to help so use it.
If you are in Houston I might be willing to tutor for a small fee. MS mechanical engineer BS math and ME Taken all the calculus, kinda
well then... Anyways, I can't take pre-cal because a) the semester started already 3 weeks ago, and b) there is no pre cal course I don't believe you when you say that's the only thing i can do, no offense.
What aspect are you having trouble with? Taking derivatives and integrating, what the processes represent, or something else?
Double duty, find an online pre-cal syllabus with a full slate of practice problems. I believe UH's Math Department did this at one time, maybe start at Chapter 3 with Logarithmic Functions, or Chapter 4 with Trig. Either that or you're going to have to shut down the rest of your social life and work all the homework problems early; then go back and practice the same section doing every other odd problem or something.
I had the same issue with calculus. No pre-cal in high school. I dropped the class the first semester and took it again the following. Taking it for a few weeks that first semester provided me enough of a foundation that I was able to excel the second time. But yeah, if I had to go back I would have taken pre-cal first, which I believe was strongly recommended by the school.
i learned about limits, which i understood pretty decently, and i am now learning about derivatives / slope of tangent line/ etc. thats where i'm totally lost. no offense, but what was the point of this comment? it didn't really have any input to my situation.
Single Variable Calculus is easy. Pre-Cal was useless because it was basically a rehash of Algebra/Trig.
This is highly important, you need to learn all everything from the beginning especially if you need higher math so you can apply it there. Calc 1 though is pretty much memorization of techniques. What aspect are you having trouble with?
Have you ever taken physics? D(t), v(t), a(t). Each subsequent graph is the derivative of the previous graph. Thinking in terms of physics really helped me in Calculus last year. Derivatives might be the single most easiest thing in Calculus. Power rule, product rule, quotient rule. All require little to no thought, just requires practice and memorization. Slope of tangent line is the instantaneous line generated by a point on the curve. Think of it like this: y=x^2. That's a parabola. You are looking for the tangent line at f(x)=2? Go to the x-values of 1.9 and 2.1. Pretend there are two points there and connect them. There's your tangent line. That's just to help visualize the concept of what a tangent line is.
The point is that if you learn at least some of the pre cal by yourself, it will be much easier. For example, you won't be able to take the derivative of things involving sin/cos/tan and simplify them without knowing precal. Anyways, what part of derivatives are you at? If you are at power/product/quotient rule, it's pretty simple. Post a sample question. Maybe someone can explain it clearer than the other websites you looked at.
