<p>It's crunch time for the add/drop period of spring classes at my local community college. I have Calculus I as one of my classes, and I am prepared to devote more time to it than any other class I am currently taking (high school senior).
I have taken College Trig (Mat-102) and high school precalculus.
The problem is, when I asked my HS teacher if my pre-cal class was sufficient preparation for calc she gave me a definitive "NO." She realizes we didn't get very far and now I am very uneasy about my Calc I class.
How hard will a class such as this be at a community college? Am I getting stressed over nothing? I scored a 670 on the SAT math section, and I generally consider math my personally weaker area. Any insight anybody can offer relating to 'Calc I' would be greatly appreciated...</p>
<p>What did you cover in your pre-calc classes? You’ll want to know how to read a function graph, and be familiar with the basic properties of exponentials, logarithms and trig functions. That’s it. All of the other topics that are sometimes taught in pre-calc classes (conic sections, vector geometry, limits, complex numbers, …) aren’t necessary to take college calculus.</p>
<p>This is coming from someone who skipped pre-calc and went straight to calculus after algebra 2 and geometry. I was fine in Calc 1. For Calc 2 I had to learn the standard trig identities, which I had never seen before. I took some more math classes in college, and never regretted not taking pre-calc. You’ve had not one but two pre-calc classes; you’ll probably be fine.</p>
<p>Calc I in a CC may be easier than AP Calculus taught in your school. It depends on the resources you have in my opinion. Last semester I took Calc I in my local CC, I have taken Pre-Calc and I had the solutions manual for my textbook. It was a great experience for me because I had such a great professor and his grading policies were so lenient. My math skills were also pretty good, got 800 on SAT Subject Test Math Level 2. </p>
<p>90% of what you learn in Pre-Calc applies to Calculus II, Calculus III, and linear algebra. The 10% may be limits and derivatives if a teacher can teach that far, those are the last things taught in Pre-Cal and the first things taught in Calculus I. Trigonometry is very useful for Calculus I, it helps you prepare for the level of math you’ll see in Calculus. I think you’ll be prepared, you should certainly give it a try.</p>
<p>Alright, thank you both so much for your posts!
I picked up the class a week late, so I’ve been working assiduously to complete the first six sections and be caught up for class on Tuesday. I’m going in a few hours early to the community college’s Math center to have some things explained and get help on the sections I can’t reason through.
These first few sections seem like they are reviewing basics and delving deeper into the concepts. There was one section already that I was reading over that is entirely on graphing. It stressed the importance of choosing the correct “window” for your graph. I have so little experience with graphing on my TI-89 that I’m completely lost. Hopefully they’ll be able to explain it on Tuesday. Thanks again! I have until Tuesday evening to decide for sure whether I want to stay in the class.</p>
<p>[Calculus</a> Using the TI-89](<a href=“http://education.ti.com/html/t3_free_courses/calculus89_online/index.html]Calculus”>Calculus Using the TI-89)</p>
<p>You can use this website made by TI to learn how to use your TI-89 for Calculus. But in my calculus class I took I rarely used my TI-84, only for calculating values of trig or exponential functions. You’ll find that you can do a lot with just a paper and pencil.</p>