Calc BC vs Multivariable Calc

<p>I took calc AB during high school and self studied some of calc BC. </p>

<p>My question is this,
I want to go straight into Multivariable Calc in College. </p>

<p>How much of Calc BC is involved in MV Calc? </p>

<p>Can i skip Calc BC and go into MV Calc and still do well? </p>

<p>Anyone with personal experience of MV calc plz help :)</p>

<p>Thanks in adv</p>

<p>Do you know Taylor series?</p>

<p>yeahh. haha is that it?</p>

<p>No, but I was making sure you knew/understood them. That is probably the most useful thing from Calc 2 that I have found (aside from the assorted integration techniques and the likes, of course).</p>

<p>I suppose if you feel comfortable then go for it.</p>

<p>Do you have AP credit for Calc BC?</p>

<p>There is some very important information in Calc 2 that may come up in Calc 3 (multivariate). The most important would be the different integration techniques. Integration by parts can come up in Calc 3. Some other integration using trig.</p>

<p>Can you take a math placement test and test out of Calc 2? I think the only way to do that is to get a 5 on the AP Calc test.</p>

<p>i am allowed to go stright into MV Calc. thing is. if I can skip BC and do fine , then i want to. I took AB so i know how to integrate and i know some of BC already. </p>

<p>So i was just wondering if BC was really important for MV Calc. Which I guess it isnt?</p>

<p>MV for derivatives and vectors is easy.
MV for integration is harder.</p>

<p>I took MV for derivatives (wasn’t required to take the quarter for integration) and the only thing I used from BC was Taylor Series.</p>

<p>I think you know most of what you need. If you’re not good at learning core concepts on your own, then don’t take MV. If you can teach yourself core concepts of calculus that might be confusing for others, then take the class.</p>

<p>This question was asked my first day of class in Calculus II by my math professor. Everybody in the class had gotten a 4 or 5 on the AP test.</p>

<p>‘What is a derivative’?</p>

<p>Everybody wrote down their answer on a little sheet of paper and handed it in by the end of class. The next class period, the professor announced that nobody in the class had got it right.</p>

<p>^ That’s really dumb, because all you need to know about a derivative is that it’s the limit of the difference quotient as h approaches zero…nobody cares about the formal definition.</p>

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<p>Let me guess, people explained what a derivative is instead of “defining” it.</p>

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<p>Yeah. It is a good point though–knowing the derivative only as ‘the slope operator’, or even worse, ‘the set of rules my teacher taught me to take derivatives of polynomials and trig functions’ doesn’t carry over when you want to talk about the derivative of a function with many variables. </p>

<p>I know that when I took calculus in high school, I just learned how to do the calculations and didn’t really think about what things meant because the AP test doesn’t really ask questions like that. A lot of students at my college started out in calculus III and then really crashed and burned because the college class required that you understood a little bit about what things meant.</p>

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<p>Uhh that is the definition of a derivative? And plenty of people care about the definition of the derivative. If you don’t understand the definition of the derivative, for example, then it’ll be difficult for you to understand a common method (finite difference) people use to numerically find the solutions to differential equations, which is something that a good number of people who are not in math care about.</p>

<p>Uhh, I always thought the derivative was the rate of change of a function or smthg. Yeesh, I hope I am ready for calc BC :l</p>