<p>So I have officially decide to take AP Calculus. My Trigonometry/Pre-Cal was horrible this year as I managed a C both semesters and struggled a lot. Can someone tell me the basics and things I have to know for Calculus? I plan to study them over the summer so I can be ready for Calculus. In addition,
What sort of graphing Calculator is good? I hear the TI-84 is Exeptional... Anybody recommend it? Thanks in advance! (:</p>
<p>Ironically, precalculus has almost nothing to do with calculus itself. If you are going to pre-study for calculus, focus on limits, derivatives, and, perhaps most importantly, integrals.</p>
<p>You’ll need some pre-calculus (trigonometry, logarithms) as many fundamental derivatives/integrals involve them. It helps to review these topics, as well as have a solid algebra background. I’ve never seen an AP Calculus problem involve complex numbers, and you won’t need matrices until at least multi-variable calculus or linear algebra.</p>
<p>The TI-84’s a good calculator, but the TI-89, NSpire, and NSpire CAS/CX all outperform the 84. They all have better graphics, run faster, and the 89 & CAS calculators have a built-in computer algebra system (CAS) which is allowed on AP and SAT tests, but banned on the ACT. But don’t let them do everything for you!</p>
<p>Know your log and exponent rules, unit circle and some trig identities. Like he said most of pre cal has nothing to do with calculus. I am a big fan pf the ti nspire cx</p>
<p>You won’t need matrix operations, complex numbers, polar coordinates/transforms until higher-level calculus.</p>
<p>Here’s a good “pre-test.” Obviously you don’t have to do all the questions, but I recommend you take a look at them and see which ones you can instantly recognize the solutions to, or ones that you may be struggling with:</p>
<p><a href=“http://data.artofproblemsolving.com/aops20/courses/Calculus/PreTest.pdf[/url]”>http://data.artofproblemsolving.com/aops20/courses/Calculus/PreTest.pdf</a></p>
<p>Dont worry about having a shaky precalc foundation, as long as you know identities and basic trig like sohcahtoa you should be fine</p>
<p>Here are few skills, some of them you may have known since Algebra 1 or earlier, but you should know how to do all of these.
Algebra skills and expression manipulation–combining like terms, completing the square etc</p>
<p>Domain/Range</p>
<p>Solving equations such as polynomials for roots, logarithmic, trigonometric</p>
<p>Solving an equation with multiple variables for a specific variable (later used in implicit
differentiation)</p>
<p>A few trig identities for expression manipulation</p>
<p>Factoring things with negative and fractional exponents–nice when you start chain and quotient ruling.</p>
<p>Simplification methods for limits–but I personally prefer L’hopital’s rule which is taught in BC but can still be used in AB.</p>
<p>Writing the equation for a line with point-slope formula and know how to find the perpendicular slope.</p>
<p>Unit Circle Values such as sin(pi/3)</p>
<p>Knowledge of the functions, their behavior, and how the curve looks.</p>
<p>Evaluating different functions at a value</p>
<p>Creating functions for a word expression such as the area of a rectangular plot of land enclosed by 3 fences and a wall with a certain fence footage.</p>
<p>When you solve calculus problems, you’ll need to do a lot of algebraic manipulation. The point of Pre-Cal is to help you gain a solid background in Algebra. Even if you bad in your class, as long as you know about algebra, Trigonometry (triangle trig is not useful here, mainly graphs of trig functions, inverse trig functions, and trig identities), exponential and logarithmic functions, you’ll be fine. Here is another short practice test.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.cengage.com/studious/]Studious[/url”>http://www.cengage.com/studious/]Studious[/url</a>]</p>
<p>^^ yep yep, that’s why precal is, at least in my opinion, basically Algebra 3</p>
<p>Thank you everybody for your opinions! I will definitely take those tests, as soon as I’m done with finals. My summer will
Be full of Calculus Preparation. Thank you again! (:</p>
<p>You’ll finally understand why precalculus is called precalculus once you take multivariable calculus (although, by that time most people forget the details about what they’ve learned and have to relearn everything). Seemingly random topics you might learn such as vectors, coordinate systems, parametric equations, matrices, etc. are very important (for example, a problem involving Stokes’s Theorem might use all of the things I previously mentioned). The trig stuff is useful for some single variable integrals (though you won’t need most of it for AB Calculus unless your teacher wants to cover more material than the AP curriculum).</p>
<p>Yeah, when I took multi-variable calculus last year, I had to relearn a few things (determinant of a matrix of 3x3 or higher, matrix multiplication, spherical coordinates) but it wasn’t too bad.</p>