Cal 1 or Cal 2

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Florida
1

<p>Hey guys, I took AP Cal AB my senior year, received a 3, and had honors the year before.</p>

<p>At preview, I decided to enroll in MAC2311 as they said if you got a 3, Cal 2 is going to be impossible for you.</p>

<p>Well I was looking at the UF registrar and my teacher for MAC2311 is Jane Smith. Out of curiosity, I looked up the teacher for MAC2312 and saw its Chui,Kwai-Lee.</p>

<p>Now Ratemyprofesor reviews tell me Smith is nice but the class is a weed out one. As for Chui, I've read shes really great and with work, her course is manageable.</p>

<p>So now, I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Is there any great advantage in the long run to going straight into Cal 2 and not repeating Cal 1?</p>

2

<p>Just had to jump in here. It depends on how difficult you found the Calc I material. I thought HS Calc was a joke, and I don’t see the point in repeating material I can just reference if I need to. I’d rather spend $$$ on one of the analysis courses down the line if I feel like I need a better understanding.</p>

<p>If you thought Calc AB was “hard”, however, then you’re probably better off retaking it. Regardless, the sequence/series stuff in Calc II is supposed to be a lot harder than Calc I.</p>

3

<p>Okay just going to drop in my two pence as well. This was my first year of college and I’m transferring to UF for this upcoming fall. Now as I see it, if they gave you the credit for Mac2311, then you can take Calc 2. However if you didn’t fully grasp Calc 1 as indicated by your ap score, you best be studying hard. For most, out of the three Calculus courses, Calc 2 is comparatively the hardest. Now I got a 3 as well on the Ap exam for AB, same with my score for Calc BC. I didn’t get the Mac2312 credit though because they found my score for BC too low. I would recommend you to retake it if you feel unsure but if you want to take Mac2312, just study and practice a lot. If you’re coming to UF this term, I could give you some help or moral support for Calc 2. Either it’s up to you. Good luck mate.</p>

4

<p>Hi.</p>

<p>I took calc 1 and calc 2 at UF, and I actually had Chui as a teacher. I never had Jane Smith because I was in the engineering section of MAC2311, but a few of my friends had Smith. She is very good at her job, and she writes the exams, so if you go to her lectures, you should know what to expect to be on the exam.</p>

<p>As far as weed out classes go, both of these classes will be weed-out style. They are (as of 2012) auditorium-style lecture classes. Because of the large classroom size, the exams will be primarily multiple choice. Because of this, people have the opportunity to do worse than if the tests were entirely free response or partial credit.</p>

<p>Chui will teach on the very first day. You will learn integration by parts on the first two or three lectures before moving on to trigonometric substitution. If the thought of this scares you, take calc 1 over again.</p>

<p>College calculus is fairly different than what you would’ve taken in high school on the AB curriculum. You will go into more theory and deeper into derivatives and why it is necessary to derive things. In calc 1 you will learn why we use trig, and it will give you a great foundation of trigonometry. If you are bad at trig, you will do poorly in calc 2. The class is about half trig, half series/sequences. The course has little to do with calc 1, but if you don’t have the understanding why calculus works the way it does, you will struggle.</p>

<p>The breakdown of calc 2 is as followed (roughly):</p>

<p>First 3rd: Integration: by parts, trig sub, partial fraction, u-sub, etc; infinite limits
Second 3rd: Sequences & Series, including Maclaurin Series and Taylor Series
Final 3rd: Revolution, Conic Sections, Graphing Polar Coordinates (r,theta)</p>

<p>The Final Exam is usually 7-10 days after exam 3, and does NOT include exam 3 material. So the final is a combination of the first and second exams, all multiple choice, no free response questions.</p>

<p>The breakdown of calc 1 will be limits, Riemann summation, basic sum formulas, derivatives(first&second derivative, mins&maxs, direction changes, inflection points, concavity changes), introduction to integration, nothing more involved than u-sub. </p>

<p>I got an A in engineering calculus by like 0.5% and I got a 4 on AB calculus in high school. It can be tricky because if you make a sign error in your calculations because you’re under time pressure or not thinking properly, chances are you will get an answer wrong. Sign errors and multiplication errors are killers on calculus multiple choice tests. On top of this, math exams are generally a time crunch, unlike chemistry tests. You might have 90 minutes for 14-15 multiple choice questions and 4 free response, which is a fast pace test environment. </p>

<p>Hope this helps. If you’re a good student you will succeed in both. Both classes require practice problems and repetition. Calculus has to be second nature come exam time.</p>

5

<p>I’ve taken Calc I for engineers and Calc II. I didn’t think either of them were as difficult as advertised and I never took any Calculus classes in high school. Calc I covers some basic pre calc principles like factoring and such, and then you go on to learn derivatives and a small introduction to antiderivatives or integrals. Calc II then picks up where Calc I leaves off and you start by learning additional integration strategies. If you feel like you understand the Calc I topics I discussed sufficiently, then I think you’ll be able to succeed in Calc II if you put the work in.</p>

6

<p>Wow, thank you all for the great advice.</p>

<p>keiwasil in particular, the details are just incredible, thanks so much.</p>

<p>I think I’m going to start with Cal 1, just to be sure. I feel like I know the material well enough, but all my life tricks have always gotten me, and I really want to be sure while I still have this first chance at getting a good grade.</p>

<p>But…these weed out tricks are kind of making me nervous. Could you guys please explain it in more detail? What would I have to do to be sure of myself in my thinking?</p>

7

<p>It’s not a weedout class there are just more weeds. I is easier than II.</p>