<p>So I'm a junior and this year I am taking Algebra 1B. This summer I will be taking Algebra 2 at my local community college. Next year I'll take Algebra 3 & Trigonometry (one class)
If I do major in engineering in college, I'll probably have to take Calculus I the first semester, at least according to the sample curriculum on several college's websites. And if I don't take Calculus I then that will just kind of destroy the sequence of classes needed, right?
So is it possible to go from Trigonometry to Calculus? Because even at my high school the prerequisites for high school calculus is more than Trig...
What should I do? Or am I wrong, can you just do well in Calc with only Trig as a background?</p>
<p>You’ll be fine, but you’ll have to put in extra time because calculus 1 is pretty damn abstract. For myself in high school, I went from trig to calculus, but it was much slower than college calculus. Then I went into calculus 1 with a calculus background and I was alright. The people who didn’t have a calculus background (talking about college now), though, most of them failed. Out of my class of about 30 students, about 10 (including myself) went on to calc 2.</p>
<p>The point is, it’s possible. I never took precalculus. I’m not sure how important it is, and other people can tell you if it is, but based on my situation, I don’t think it’s very important. If you want to go straight into calculus, make sure you definitely get extra help if anything at all confuses you because there’s a reason that calculus 1 is important: the rest of calculus builds up on it.</p>
<p>That tells me that your school is really bad at teaching Calc 1 if there was only a 33% pass rate. That is definitely NOT average nationwide.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that it was really bad, because the students that did pass, majority of them received higher than a B…unless that’s bad lol</p>
<p>Sorry for the late reply, but thank you! That was very helpful.</p>
<p>Pre-calc is essentially a mix of trig and algebra, and is not generally required for calculus 1 if the student is well versed in algebra and has at least a basic understanding of trig. Algebra 3 and trig should be sufficient, but if you are still not sure I would suggest taking a full semester of trig instead since calc 1 uses a good amount of trig functions and finding the derivatives of algebraic expressions.</p>
<p>Like I said, pre-calc is just algebra and trig with a couple of calculus concepts thrown in, but in reality there is no ‘elementary’ stage to calculus; you will either get it or you won’t. Unless you take really high levels of algebra, or perhaps analytical geometry, trig would be the best ‘pre-calc’ math to learn.</p>
<p>It really comes down to how you think. </p>
<p>@Boneh3ad: Um, not really. The college didn’t teach the course, one teacher did. Perhaps that prof was lousy, perhaps the prof was really tough, or perhaps the students were lazy. Perhaps the prof didn’t grade on a curve, and the grade the students got is the grade they actually earned.</p>
<p>I would suspect any college course, math or otherwise, where the entire class passed, let alone passed with high marks, as being easy and a waste of time for anyone who actually wants to learn the subject.</p>