Can someone tell me if this sounds like a precalc course?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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<p>Because I'm stupid, obviously. Or trying to decipher my community college's course catalog. Pick one. (:</p>

<p>Elements of Calculus I:
Emphasizes use of graphing calculators to study limits, derivatives, applications to graphing, extrema (what the hell is that?), antiderivatives (those sound scary), definite integrals in business, and biological applications.</p>

<p>So...is that what you usually do in precalc? Or is some of that stuff just random crap...? Come on, CCers! I'm trying to prepare myself so AP Calc next year won't be epic fail. :)</p>

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<p>it is a calculus course</p>

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<p>That’s Calc I lol. Derivatives and integrals are all AB stuff.</p>

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<p>hey guys lets prepare for calc AB which is a one year course by taking it over the summer in 6 weeks. TEEEEEEEEHEEEEEEE im so smart</p>

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<p>um, jpl, quite the contrary. I’m terrible at math these days, hence the fact that I am taking precalc over the summer unlike the other kids in algebra II/trig, who are just going straight to AP Calc.</p>

<p>And…damn. The whole “elements” part in the title is very misleading.</p>

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<p>Well, those are the fundamental parts of calculus.</p>

<p>Also, for your future reference, if you ever see a course titled “Fundamentals of ____” run away. It’s going to be hard.</p>

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<p>look for introductory classes not fundamentals/elements etc</p>

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<p>I was in honors precalc last semester and we didn’t do any of that stuff</p>

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<p>That’s definitely Calculus. Derivatives, antiderivatives, and integrals are what you learn in Calculus. (I must be a total nerd, because this is bringing back memories…)</p>

<p>I don’t quite remember what I did in Pre-cal (it’s been awhile…) but I think it was basically math all the way to Algebra II combined with Trig, except more in depth. I remember matrices, parabola/hyperbola/etc graphing…</p>

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<p>At our HS, trig/math analysis is the typical “pre-calc” class before AP Calc.</p>

<p>Yep, the class you’ve described is Calc.</p>

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<p>it’s calc, I’m in precalc right now and we haven’t covered those topics yet.</p>

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<p>fingerpainting</p>

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<p>

yeah, I think it looks like precalculus to me.</p>

<p>Or perhaps I’m color-blind?</p>

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<p>some of that stuff sounds like my precal class. we went over intergrals and derivatives, and limits, SO…idk. might just be my school</p>

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<p>Inn my precalculus class, we did go over limits and derivatives (only the power rule and the difference quotient, though). We touched on integrals but we weren’t supposed to - we used to find the area under the curve using ridiculous Riemann Sums, and integrals were an easy way to check our work.</p>

<p>In my school, accelerated tenth graders take trigonometry (a whole class) and precalculus (a whole class) in one year, blocked. At my school, trig is really its own entity and precalculus is just like Algebra III + intro to Calculus. But the two classes were very different and packed to the brim. I can’t imagine having them as one class.</p>