Is there anyone who studied Calculus out there?

Question

If so:please tell me is it very hard or what??whats the difference between Calculus and an oridinary math book??Im damn afraid of that Calculus book so please someone help me with this info.

Answer 1

I studied Calculus when I was a senior in high school. Calculus is hard, but you learn along the way.

Answer 2

Depends on the teacher and book. But the first things you'll run into are limits, pretty easy. Not going to bother explaining those...then derivatives, which tell you the slope of the tangent line to a graph at a point and help with graphing functions. Integrals are basically the inverse of derivatives and tell you the area beneath a graph. Then there's complex methods of integrating, then applications of the integral like finding the volume of tires and vases and other irregular shapes. Convergence of series, which is if you're given a sequence and asked to add up all the terms, does the sum approach a number or does it go to infinity. Taylor and MacLaurin polynomials, which are ways of approximating the values of functions.

That's all I remember for high school calculus...college calculus can go into little o-notation (a way to simplify calculations with Taylor and MacLaurin polynomials), the gamma function (factorials for non-integers), applications of complex numbers (expressing e^x in terms of cosine and sine)...

I know it sounds overwhelming. I just gave you single variable calculus in a nutshell.

But I'm guessing you're just starting, so it'll be mostly easy if you have a decent teacher and read your textbook once in a while. Once you get the hang of it all it's easy.

After all, if you have any problems you can just ask on yahoo answers. ;D

Answer 3

Calculus revived my interest in mathematics, it's quite easy at first if you stick to simple application, but the concepts behind it are intriguing indeed.
Integration might be a tough nut to crack but most books at elementary level brush over it with easy examples.
Calculus is a generalised abstraction that has a myriad of uses, this sets it apart from mainstream math(what people thinks is math).
Read that calculus book, you might enjoy it, I recommend Apostol's Calculus and Strang's Calculus to beginners.
Post any problems you bump into on Yahoo! like the lady said.

Answer 4

Calculus is fun. It is easy to learn if you study hard and listen to the teacher. Seek help when you need it.

Most calculus books start out with a brief review of algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and analytic geometry.

Then they discuss limits of functions and how to find them. For example. the limit of x+4 as x approaces 0 is 0. That's simple enough. But what is the limit of x^x as x approaches 0? or sinx/x as x approaches 0.

Then you will learn differentiation: that is how do you find the dervative of a function;.how do you find maximum and minimum points of a function; how do you find the tangent to any curve at any point?

Then you move on to integration which really is the opposite of differentiation. Here you will learn how to find areas under a curve. You will be able to prove that the area of a circle is pi*r^2. You will learn how to find moments of inertia of solid bodies. All kinds of good stuff.

If you were good at trig and analytic geometry, you will do just fine.

Good luck

Answer 5

Im at university studying engineering and im still learning calculus. basicly it involves looking at the properties of graphs i.e. the area under a line or the gradient at any point etc etc

Answer 6

If you can do Algebra, Trigonometry, and also "Precalculus", then Calculus is easier than those, although they are prerequisites.