<p>There are two kinds of humanities: hard (philosophy) and soft.</p>
<p>Philosophy does not require calculus, but it requires logical thinking, similar to what upper division proof-oriented math requires.</p>
<p>If the teacher is suspect, don’t have your kid sign up. Learn it right or don’t bother. If the scores for the previous classes exams are poor (less than 50% pass) just don’t bother. My D had an amazing teacher (took AB/BC as a junior) and a great tutor to get her thought the Algebra II stuff that she did not get before from a lousy teacher. If he/she is interested in engineering, they will have to take it over anyway.</p>
<p>Calculus is not required for undergraduate philosophy but quite a lot for graduate program.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/643159-how-much-college-math-philosophy-phd-hopeful.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/643159-how-much-college-math-philosophy-phd-hopeful.html</a></p>
<p>I don’t know if I was right defining D. as a humanity kid. she doesn’t want to do hard sciences like chemistry, physics, engineering etc. She likes to deal with people. So there are possibilities like econ, which definitely needs math. But more likely, she wants to develop towards relations (human, like international), business, law, etc. Anyway, math is a good training. and if somehow this kind of students can get math done with in high school it’ll be nice.</p>
<p>Economics needs calculus; those going to graduate school need more advanced math. It also needs statistics; those going to graduate school need more-mathematical in-depth statistics courses.</p>
<p>Business usually needs calculus and introductory statistics.</p>
<p>Other social studies majors typically need statistics or a major-specific quantitative methods course. Students who are good at math have an advantage here.</p>
<p>Law has no specific course or major requirements of pre-law students, but being able to think logically and mathematically is helpful on the LSAT, based on a look at the released practice tests.</p>
<p>herandhisMom - Kids change goal after one or two years attending college.
My D. was considering humanities during HS senior year and the first year of college. She changed to engineering in the second semester of sophomore year.</p>
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<p>From what my kids tell me – and my own vague memories of taking calculus a very long time ago – the material taught in first-semester (or AB) calculus is not very difficult, conceptually. The material taught in second-semester (or the part of BC not included in AB) is much more challenging to understand.</p>
<p>A very motivated student who is willing to work a lot on his/her own and who has access to lots of study materials (AP prep books and all the stuff you can find online) could probably overcome the disadvantage of a poor teacher for AB calculus because the material is not particularly difficult. But I wouldn’t suggest trying this for BC.</p>
<p>I’m thinking if she will do calc BC, she will not do it in her school - will try to get it from a local college and take the AP exam in May her senior year. If she (plus our help) can do calc AB, that’ll be satisfactory. </p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the comments. This is very helpful.</p>
<p>Does anyone know of an unexpensive online calc bc? My school offers ab so my parents wouldn’t fund an expensive online class. I want to go into engineering, so I want to get a full start into calc before I have to adjust to college. Let me know I it’s a bad idea to skip from honors Precalculus (which is very easy for me) to calc bc. Thanks</p>
<p>Something that has started to catch on is taking the AB class (if you can’t take BC) and then self-study the rest of BC. It allows you to get taught the basics of calc but also allows you take the BC to be able to be exempted from more classes in high school. The BC test consists of an AB subscore because the tests are very simular. Only about 33% of the BC is new material not learned in AB so it shouldn’t be difficult to self study but I’m just going to take BC and not have to worry how much I might procrastinate ;)</p>
<p>@egelloc That’s a nice idea. I wonder how those people score on the bc part.</p>
<p>Here is a free calculus textbook:
[Textbook</a> | Calculus Online Textbook | MIT OpenCourseWare](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-001-calculus-online-textbook-spring-2005/textbook/]Textbook”>Textbook | Calculus Online Textbook | Supplemental Resources | MIT OpenCourseWare)</p>
<p>You can use it along with the course description to self-study the added topics if you choose to go that route:
[AP</a> Central - AP Calculus BC Course Home Page](<a href=“Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board”>AP Calculus BC Course – AP Central | College Board)</p>
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<p>I think there are standard calc books used in AP Calc. Not sure which author(s) specifically but my impression is that they’re largely uniform.</p>
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<p>This basically says the same thing.</p>
<p>egelloc80: When I went to high school, back in the stone ages, my school allowed us to take the Calculus BC course but opt to take only the AB exam. That was great for me because I was exposed to all of the BC material, but only had to study for the AB exam. Can you do that?</p>
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<p>College calculus courses are fairly standardized, and most books for them teach them similarly. Stewart’s books are common these days, though the older edition of Strang’s book that is free on the web (like in #33) should be fine. AP calculus courses should be selecting from the same books.</p>
<p>Honors college calculus courses, or those at elite STEM-focused schools, may use books like Apostol’s book that are heavy on theory.</p>
<p>Colleges may also offer less rigorous “calculus for business majors” courses which use less rigorous books.</p>
<p>Is the book ucbalumnus listed THE book for AP calc BC? </p>
<p>My D. is taking AP US history. I found out most schools in the country use the same book. But for AP chemistry class, 10 schools may use 10 different books.</p>
<p>Our school only has AP calc AB which is not accepted by many good colleges.</p>
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There are dozens of calculus textbooks out there. Stewart appears to be the most popular choice among college instructors, but I don’t know which textbook(s) high schools use. </p>
<p>Not that it should matter though. Like ucbalumnus said, most calculus textbooks are more-or-less the same.</p>