are you in calculus 1 (mainly derivatives)? wolfram alpha is pretty good with explaining questions and stuff, if you are going to take additional calc it won't get easier than this course so study intensively while the course is fresh otherwise you will fall behind very quickly
No, i've never taken physics either. So, you say derivatives are easy - power rule, product rule, quotient rule. mind briefly showing examples of what those are? And I know what a tangent line is. Hmm, sorry for the confusion. I'd post some full on calculus questions but i don't think this is the right place to do it...
The only way to really help yourself is dedication (Cliche, I know). Go back, look at the book, look at the lecture notes, seek a campus tutor, and repeat the process for each chapter. That's kind of what I figured college to be, there's no more 'skimming' through books. Have to put 100% effort. If, after all that, you still don't understand, then it's a sign that the concepts are too difficult for you and you might want to digress back a bit. Maybe to a previous class or a pre-requisite to your current class (Such as a lab or workshop).
Thanks. We have tutor sessions , but I've never been to one. I'm a bit shy, so I don't really know how it would work. Like, i just walk in and there are tutors ready to help or what? And all calculus students for my class are forced to take a workshop in addition to the class, but the problem is, my university hires fobs (no offense) who know little english and have very strong accents, so when you ask for help, it really does no good
Thank you. I'm just glad there are no Chihuahua issues. They can be vicious. As for calc, **** sucks. Just have to study a lot and do as much practice work as possible. I say this as someone who is only OK at calculus. It was a pain, but you can get through it by being miserable and working on it.
This makes sense, and I hope the OP can benefit from it. Newton developed The Calculus in large part to help him think through his studies of motion and dynamics. So the physics of mechanics and calculus fit together really, really well. OP, it's basically a set of mathematical tools that help us look at physical situations in exact moments instead of just using averages. To use a basketball analogy (kind of), imagine the difference of analyzing a game only in its entirity versus being able to discuss what happens minute by minute. In that analogy: non-calculus approach has us just talking about the final scores of games and the per-game average of different players. But the calculus approach lets us track things like the exact score of different games minute-to-minute. It let's us see if one team is *really* good in the first two minutes of the third quarter, and stuff like that. Calculus type approaches might note that Lerbon is 0-for-378 in the last two minutes of games.
Examples: Power rule: f(x) = 3x^4 f'(x) = 12x^3 f''(x) = 36x^2 f'''(x) = 72x f''''(x) = 72 f'''''(x) = 0 Product Rule: f(x) * g(x) f(x) = 12x^2 g(x) = 4x^3 Derivative of f(x) * g(x) + Derivative of g(x) * f(x). Quotient Rule: f(x) / g(x) f(x) = 12x^2 g(x) = 4x^3 ( Derivative of f(x) * g(x) - Derivative of g(x) * f(x) ) / (g(x))^2
Really the only thing you can do is bite down on your pride, keep asking questions of your TA, keep practicing, keep asking questions of your peers who seem to understand it, and get a tutor who is willing to sit with you and really determine what you don't understand. Given that you said you didn't really learn in pre-calc, you likely are going to have to start building the base you were expected to have before entering the class. Unless you are some sort of idiot savant, to build that base you are going to have to practice and practice. To repeat the cliche, you are going to have to work - honestly, you will have to work harder than all the rest of your peers in the class. But, if you aren't willing to do that, expect to continue struggling and falling further and further behind. It sucks, life's not fair, and we don't exist on a level playing field.
Are you learning about derivatives right now? Where are you getting stuck? Edit: N/m, just saw this: How are you reviewing this stuff? Going through lecture slides, the notes you took in class, or the textbook? What I would do when I was in school was take sheet of paper and pencil, and work through the introductory explanations of these concepts in the textbook or lecture notes. Its important that you physically draw the curves, pencil in the tangent lines, and that way get a feel for what this is all about (if you're not already doing that). When learning math, at least for me, just reading from a page often wasn't enough for the concepts to sink in. It made a difference to reproduce the graphs and calculations by my own hand.
I'm so damned glad I don't have to deal with this. My daughter is taking AP calculus at her magnet high school as a senior, and my significant other and I are completely useless when it comes to being of any help to her. Fortunately, she has an older brother who just graduated with degrees in computer engineering and computer science, who knows this stuff backward and forward, thank god, and he just moved back to Austin. OP, you have my deepest sympathy. I hated this stuff in school.
You can post questions here if you want, although the notation will be a bit difficult to express since it's all typed out. Also definitely go to your professor's office hours or the teaching assistant's office hours. You won't feel embarrassed cause there's nobody else there to judge you, and the teacher is there to help you 100%.
I was in the same boat as you. Never took cal before and got thrown into the fast-paced one at UT, and the best advice I can give you is to practice a lot. Derivatives and integrals become second nature as you move on to cal 2, cal 3, and diff EQ (I'm guessing you're going on that path). These are pretty helpful: http://online.math.uh.edu/HoustonACT/ http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ Also, PatrickJMT is pretty good. I'm not sure his stuff is free anymore, though.
Okay, thanks. I will post some questions here, but not today, tomorrow afternoon. I have calculus lecture tomorrow, so i'll try to grasp what he teaches us. I realize I have to understand this stuff now, because I'm only going to sink deeper and deeper down this clueless hole the longer I wait.
If I were you, I'd write out the example the RedRedemption typed out and look over that. Also find practice problems that's related to the rules you just mentioned. Calculus was hard at first but once you start getting practice, it really isn't that bad. Dunno what college you attend but if you're at UH, I have some friends there who can provide you with the old exams for you get practice on.
Ok, finally someone that was in the same boat as me (not to dis-credit the legit answers i've gotten so far in this thread) By practice, do you mean out of the text book? Because in class as the professor is going thorugh the lesson, i seem to understand some of it. But once I open the text book to start some practice problems, I get completely lost -___- What I think I need is some detailed answers that detail each and every step in solving the problem. i was told 'calcchat.com' had this, but when i went on that website and selected my book, all they show is the answer, no step by step directions as the website advertises ...
