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During my highschool I've gone through algebra 2, geo, pre-calc, and this past year I decided (big mistake) to take statistics instead of biting the bullet and going with calculus. Now during enrollment I'm debating whether to go back and do college algebra and trig just to refresh my background I guess...would this be a good idea?
Why not just refresh the material by yourself over summer? It should go fast as you have already taken the courses once. Take Calculus in college as it will give you a smooth transition into the upper div classes and help you graduate in four years.
My opinion on the subject is worthless. With that said, just take calc!! Even if you take it and **** it up, you'll just take retake it the following semester and be much more prepared than someone who had only taken alegebra.
If you're doing engineering, you're going to need the skills you learn in calculus pretty quickly. I know even my intro classes we were expected to know calculus.
At my college some engineering majors require people to take a class called engineering statistics, so it isn't that big of a loss. I don't know if yours requires a statistics class as well, but it doesn't hurt to have a basic knowledge of statistics
I don't think trigonometry and college algebra play that great a role in Calculus I in particular. I never took it in high school and did a one month self taught course on it, and I don't recall running into any topics in Calculus I that I was unprepared for due to little background knowledge of those subjects.
Precalculus on the other hand (as an introduction to limits, etc) probably would have been more valuable to study before taking Calculus I.
Yeah definitely just go ahead and take calculus. You don't want to be behind in a gen ed math class. I know at my school for engineering you have to take calc 1 first semester freshman year. If you didn't score well enough on the diagnostic math exam then you had to take calc 1 concurrently with pre-calc, which I think is kind of strange but I know some people that had to do it. I don't think any of them are left in engineering, but that's beside the point.
Thank you for the replies, I understand how important it is to know calc, I just dont want to **** up and discourage myself by jumping in right off the bat into calculus without much previous knowledge. I'm also concerned if college algebra and trig. would be a waste of my time and hold me back, I'll just take the advice and study and try to review calc through the summer.
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