One semester down - Which class was the "nightmare" class?

[sylvan8798]

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@BCEagle91

I think that most large universities offer a Calc for Science and Engineering and a Calc for social science/business majors. I had a look at the University of Michigan Math department and they do offer a proof-based course.</p>

<p>I also had a look at the University of Vermont and they do offer a variety of calc courses but I didn’t see anything involving proofs. My offhand guess is that most universities don’t offer the proof-based courses. If you want that, you get it later courses.

I think there may be a confusion in understanding here. Introductory Calculus at the college level is typically either geared towards engineering/physics/hard sciences, or towards others/business/soft sciences. The non-science calculus (I termed it Calculus Lite when I taught these courses) has virtually zero theory. No proofs to speak of. You lay out the basic concepts, get the techniques down, and work on applying them to various problems. Sometimes a school has a special sequence “Calculus for Business Majors” which focuses the applications on Revenue - cost - profit type applications. </p>

<p>The calculus for engineering and science majors has quite a bit of theory and proofs, and is much more in depth across the spectrum of functions (trig, logs, etc.). In my courses we used Leithold for 3 semesters. </p>

<p>Virtually every college teaching this stuffs will have a similar Lite/Not breakdown, although the non-science path typically is 1 course or maybe 2, while the engineer/science path is at least 4 courses. Neither of these sequences gets anywhere near real analysis, which is at a whole 'nuther level, being solely theories and proofs. You have to have had the intro courses before you can even get near the real analysis level.</p>