<p>A lot of the majors I’m looking at in the science field require calculus of some sort, is it as hard as people say?</p>
<p>They’re a challenge but not impossible. There’s always a lot of help for lower division classes; you’re not on your own until the upper division ones.</p>
<p>Well for one, mathematics is the language of science, so whether it’s hard or not, you still have to take it if you want to get into engineering or any other hard science. In other words, you shouldn’t worry about how hard it is and just give it your best shot.</p>
<p>Second, there is no general answer here. It all depends on you. What’s hard for one person may not be for another.</p>
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<p>boneh3ad is correct the level of difficulty is completely subjective, then again I also believe anyone can learn calculus with enough effort.</p>
<p>Ask yourself (be honest)
1.)Do I suck at algebra?
2.) Do I suck at trigonometry
3.)Do I suck at abstract thinking?</p>
<p>The more yeses you have the harder calculus will be, but honestly its not that bad, the concepts are pretty straightforward, do yourself a favor and look at the syllabus and read the material in book the day before the lecture of that material because unless you are some Gauss you are more than likely not going to pick up the concept in one sitting. So reading it before the lecture will expose to the material, and allow you to ask questions on any parts you may have a hard time grasping, during the lecture. </p>
<p>Many people do not do this and then blame the instructor of the course when they do bad/don’t get the concept when it is entirely their fault.</p>
<p>You may think you’re very smart but trust me, almost no one gets concepts in one sitting unless you’re very special and if you were that special you wouldn’t be asking this question, so lose the academic ego if you have one</p>
<p>I struggled a little at first with calc 1, but that was because it introduced a new way of thinking; precalc was essentially a glorified algebra class and going from that to calc 1, which deals with how things change over time, was new to me (not to mention I hated the textbook we used at first).</p>
<p>The thinking in calc 2 continued where calc 1 left off; nothing really difficult here, just practice problems and exercises and it will sink in.</p>
<p>I took calc 3 online, which made it a bit difficult but it wasn’t too bad. It was essentially the stuff from calc 2 but in 3 dimensions.</p>
<p>With that said, practice as many problems and exercises as you can (even if it means doing more than what your professor asks for), get tutoring if you need it (as stated above, pretty easy to do with classes like calculus) and there are always online videos like khanacademy for a different way of explaining things.</p>
<p>No… it’s harder. Just kidding. The answer varies a lot by the student and and a little bit by school/program. </p>
<p>no its not hard…you just need to do the homework…diff equations was challenging…</p>
<p>It definitely depends on the student. My D took AP Calc BC in high school senior year. She starts with Calc 3 as freshmen in engineering this year. It is a little bit challenging but not really overwhelming for her. </p>
<p>I also depends on the textbook. I didn’t think DiffEq was that bad because the examples in my book were well thought out and didn’t skip many steps. When I saw how my dynamics book treated the same ODE’s I was like “what is this garbage? why would anyone do it this way?” To that end, my linear algebra book was not good at explaining the material. I still can’t tell anyone what exactly an eigenvector is, but I can compute/find one :-p</p>
<p>edit: sorry, specifically calc 1-3, again, having a good book helps. By good book I mean one with good example problems, a solutions manual to check your work, and a ton of practice problems lumped together by topic so you can keep practicing until you understand what’s going on. The only thing I find that makes a class hard is when the professor tests you on something you’ve never seen before and expects you to adapt. This is, in my opinion, what sets college calc apart from AP.</p>
<p>To me, Calc 2 to be the most difficult. Calc 3 and Diff Eq were cake for me.</p>
<p>For me Calc1 and some of Calc2 were review from AP. It was DiffEQ that challenged me. I got through the exams ok (except the on that had a question part b on back side of the page… thankfully Prof Miller believed me about not seeing it and said he’d make final judgement after seeing all the grades… yes, I still have vivid memories from Engineering classes 30 years ago). </p>
<p>Example - It was not a problem to get through an exam on Bernoulli equation. What got me was future engineering classes, where prof would say, "clearly here we would solve with Bernoulli equation.) It was not always clear to me. That is how I knew that I’d not be a good candidate for grad school. </p>
<p>One person in my family had a hard time with math through school, got a D in precalc, retook it and got an A, and then got A’s in Calc 1-3 in college. Personally I like the thinking involved in calc more than earlier math classes.</p>
<p>It’s not that bad in my opinion. If you put enough time in I think it is actually pretty easy. If you have good study habits an A or B for most people should be pretty easily attainable. If you prefer to just try to do all your homework and cram the night before the exam, failure will be much more likely.</p>
<p>^ Strongly agree with this. Just keep up with your homework and make sure you understand it all. I’d mark down any problems that gave you significant issues. That way, you can work them out again before an exam. I’d also do the same thing with your quizzes. If you miss a problem on them, make sure to re work the problem and understand it before your next test. </p>
<p>I feel like math and science departments in college are the ones that take a bigger step up from high school to college. I go to UT Austin which is a pretty good school for math. We have a few different calculus 1-3 sequences. The engineers here do the accelerated sequence that does calculus 1-3 in two semesters. It’s possible the school you are going to may have multiple ways to do the calculus sequence too with some easier than others. I know a few engineers that failed calculus class(es) and some that have passed all their math classes with poor grades as well as some that breezed through it. Some engineers that I know had to take their calculus at a community college and transfer the credit. My school offers free tutoring for lower level math classes so I suggest checking for that. College level Calculus courses (as well as any math courses in college) will cover material at a much faster pace, having more in depth questions, and doing less examples than in high school math. I’d recommend you not think about that for now and just figure out which school you want to go to for engineering. After you get accepted and commit to a school, go ahead and spend some time looking at how the calculus sequence is going to work at that particular school and which places on campus if any offer free tutoring for students.</p>
<p>Edit: As far as the above post about calculus not being bad as long as you put in enough time, I think it depends. I don’t have to put in much time studying in order to do well in math classes but I’m a math major. I have friends that are fair at math and can do well if they put in the time. However, I have a big chunk of friends that are very bad at math and will put in extremely high amount of hours studying and doing everything they can to do the best they can between going into office hours and such and still struggle and not have grades to show for it. I strongly believe there’s some people that just don’t understand math. Most of the people in this category have struggled in math throughout HS. If you are okay at math or better then I think you’d at the very worst fall in the category of doing well if you just put in the time.</p>
<p>I agree, it really depends on the individual. However, the majority of Engineering majors are at LEAST average at Mathematics. I believe anyone who is at least average in math should be able to make it through the Calculus series with enough determination. If someone is not at least average in Math, they are gonna have a really bad time when they have to apply it to Engineering/Physics applications. It should also be noted, people can improve their math skills. A below average Math student can become an above average student with enough time and correct study habbits. If someone tries to memorize the material instead of learning it, they’re gonna be wasting a lot of their efforts. I’ve tutored several individuals who stopped “memorizing” and started to actually try to understand the material. In several of these cases, the student went from a D/C student to a B/A student. This is just from my experience, however.</p>
<p>The grade one gets in Calc classes also depends on the teacher and class policy. Thirty years ago the calculus sequence at my school was pretty difficult (weed out for engineering students) but a few profs were renowned for their ‘easiness’ and a few more avoided like the plague for the same reason. Eventually the school caught up with the happenings and stopped publishing faculty names in the class list, but given the paper based add/drop of the era we got around it by registering for several sections of the same class in the hope of getting Prof. Easy vs. Prof. Voldemort. I even wrote a program to generate the combinations based on other classes in one’s schedule…</p>
<p>From our experience back then the right vs. wrong prof. was the difference between an A and a C.</p>
<p>Thirty years later? I don’t know. My older girl took the calculus for poets sequence and it was amazing that out of ten or so sections and profs they were using 6-7 different calculus books and had different policies in terms of what percentage of the grade homeworks/quizzes/etc are. My daughter took the class that had some 30-40% of the grade as online homework, some mega-web site with every known question ever, very time consuming but really helpful in drilling the concepts, and the tests were quite similar to the homeworks. Other sections were 10% paper homeworks and needless to say a lot harder overall.</p>
They must have not had too hard of a time if they were getting A’s in advanced calculus…
Two good books; Calculus by Larson; Vector Calculus by Colley.
For me I think it really depends on the teacher. Some teachers will make you cry with how difficult their class is, and others will make you laugh at how hard you thought it would be. Generally speaking, people will say calc 2 is the hardest and calc 3 is the easiest. From my experience, I think this couldn’t be more true. Calc 1 was pretty easy because a lot of it was limits (which my specific class didn’t focus on but it’s not too hard) and differentiation, along with some applications and theorems of that. Calc 2 was a lot of integration, more theorems, and a LOT more applications. I personally thought calc 2 was pretty difficult, but not so hard that it wasn’t possible to pass. Just push through it! My teacher told me that once we started Taylor series, that’s when people started questioning why they were in calc 2. However, once we got through it, I thought it was actually the easiest topic. I had a very difficult (but extremely good) calc teacher for 1 and 2. (I took BC, and she’s known for all of her students getting 5’s but being super difficult in class.) As for calc 3, I’m taking it at our local university and let me tell you it’s a joke. It doesn’t even feel like calculus. It may be one of the easiest math classes I’ve taken. Yes, we’re using some calculus, but it’s just so easy… I do have a really easy teacher though, and that could be part of it.