<p>I completed PreCalculus this semester with a B+.</p>
<p>I MIGHT end up taking Calculus in a couple semesters but I just need to know a few things:
1. Which one of the two classes did you find more difficult?
2. How much interconnected are they?
3. Which has more graphing? (which is my personal weakness)</p>
<p>Yes, I know Precalc is the preparation course to Calculus but some ppl I meet say that Precalc is harder and then some people say that Calc was harder. What's YOUR experience?</p>
<p>Pre-Calculus was definitely harder for me, because there was a lot of trigonometry review, and I wasn’t good at trigonometry. If you want to get an idea, I had to retake Pre-Calculus twice and still ended up with a C at best, whereas with Calculus, once I got the hang of it, I got a B (I’m prone to making computing mistakes on exams since I don’t do well on timed tests, otherwise I could’ve easily gotten an A). Frankly, the ONLY topic from Pre-Calculus that came back in Calculus was polar coordinates (unless polar coordinates isn’t covered in your Pre-Calc class), and that’s usually in Calculus II. In Calculus I, the main thing you’ll be learning about is limits and differentials. In Calculus II, the main focus will be on derivatives, antiderivatives, and integrals (my favorite subjects in Calculus). There weren’t any graphing in the Calculus courses I took, both at my JC and at my current university. Even my Pre-Calculus course didn’t require graphing, since the professors knew that not all of us could afford a graphing calculator.</p>
<p>In Pre-Calculus you learn about topics that appear in Calculus but deal with them algebraically. Except for Trigonometry most of what you learn appears in Calculus II and III. You probably learned about parametric equations, polar coordinates, 3-D Cartesian coordinate system, and sequences/series in Precalculus. All these will show up in Calculus II and III. </p>
<p>I believe the calculus is difficult because of the level of algebra involved. Calculus alone won’t always enable you to solve the problems you’ll see in your course, you will need some ingenuity in problem solving.</p>
<p>When I took Calculus I never needed my graphing calculator because rarely will your teacher require you to draw graphs</p>
<p>It is very time consuming and requires great attention to detail.</p>
<p>Pre-calculus was one of the hardest math courses I’ve ever taken, much harder than the first two classes of calculus I AP’ed out of in school. Precal covers more than the name suggests: I’ve used it in higher-level maths like linear algebra and differential equations as well.</p>
<p>I just finished college algebra with a C; clearly math is not my thing at all, this spring I’m taking my last math class, which is survery of calulus that is required to all business majors.</p>
<p>I’m assuming its a lower level of the OP calculus class is referring too? But can anyone give me a heads up on what I’m facing with this class and some tips?</p>
<p>I found precalc harder than calculus. Precalculus is a bit of a survey class–just helps you review the operations and tools you need to do math like calculus and beyond. In that aspect, it’s hard, because there are no overarching goals that you’re trying to accomplish. In Calculus, you can always start cracking a difficult problem by remembering, “Oh, I’m trying to get the area here,” or whatnot.</p>
<p>pre-calculus is a synthetic course and its name is misleading</p>
<p>to start learning single-variable calculus, all you need to know is algebra and trig. Courses called “pre-calc” are just trig with a review of some earlier stuff thrown in for “good measure.”</p>
<p>Pre-calculus is a review of algebra and introduces trig-- I always called it ‘algebra on crack.’ It’s there because I’ve found that as a peer tutor, a lot of students have trouble with the algebra behind the calculus concepts-- they’ll be able to descrie the process of what needs to be done, but their lack of algebra skills are holding them back from completing the problem. For most calculus courses, you don’t need super-polished algebra skills, but you need to be able to solve equations, systems of equations, trig equations, and be comfortable with fractions/decimals/messy things.</p>