<p>If I had substantial time during the school head to work on Calculus, could I make a straight jump from algebra II to AP Calc? How much did pre calc help you with calculus and do you feel like you could've done calculus without it? Thanks!</p>
<p>It’s not a real math field, so you don’t really need it. You should study some of the material before calculus, but I tested out of it and was fine.</p>
<p>In calculus, you’ll need this stuff right away:
- trigonometry (obscure identities can be looked up, but be familiar with the basic ones)
- function types and their graphs/transformations
- logarithms/exponential functions
- binomial theorem for proof of power rule </p>
<p>Toward the end of single-variable you’ll need:
- polar coordinates
- parametric equations/vector stuff
- sequences and series
- conic sections</p>
<p>It depends how comfortable you feel with math. Personally I would not, many people struggle with calculus to begin with and need pre-calc as a time to solidify their skills and get familiar with some of the concepts that will later appear.</p>
<p>Will skipping pre-calc give you opportunities to take more advanced math classes or just get you done a year early? If you are a math genius, i would say grab a precalc book from the library and look through the sections to prepare yourself for calculus. However, if you even slightly need some help in math or do not like it, definitely take precalc first. Many people, even with taking precalc and trig struggled pretty badly in calculus.</p>
<p>I personally wouldn’t do it. But if math is like your life, and you’re willing to put in extra work, maybe study precalc concepts over the summer so that calculus will be easier. I can’t believe your school even has that option. We just have an option to skip from Math Analysis (PreCalc and Calc AB together) to Calc BC. I’m just going from Math Analysis to Calc AB.</p>
<p>My school requires that you take precalc before calculus. Most kids from regular precalc go to AP Calculus AB and the kids from honors go to AP Calculus BC. I’m going to be in BC next year.</p>
<p>I personally found precalc very easy. But then again, I thought all my math classes in high school were easy. If you’re strong in math, go for it and skip. But I think the class to skip is geometry. If I could go back in time I would have taken it over the summer before freshman year and ended my high school career with Multivariable Calculus…</p>
<p>I think HalcyonHeather covered it pretty well. Those are really the important things you need to know for Calc that you might not already be familiar with. Otherwise, PreCalc is mostly an intensive review of Algebra.</p>