I got an A in cal 1 and I’m going to get either a high B or a low A in Cal 2. I looked at my school’s curriculum and the only other true math classes I have to take are engineering probability, Cal 3, and differential equations.
I’ve heard Cal 3 is easier than Cal 2 and to my knowledge engineering probability is more statistics mixed with some calculus. But I don’t know much about differential equations… I’m having trouble in Cal 2, with the series especially. I know I’ll get ice creamed for this, but if you had to rank differential equations in order of difficulty with the calculus classes, how would you rank them?
Differential equations is to calculus as algebra is to arithmetic. DE uses calculus to solve problems. So, I would say that DE is harder than calculus. DE is necessary to solve many engineering problems although once you solve it parametrically, you have the solution for life.
For my D, Calc3 is more difficult than Calc1/2, and even Calc4.
DiffEq can vary in difficulty based on what depth of understanding you want to go for. If you try to pass it by simply following the equations without spending much time on trying to understand how differential equations work, an easy teacher might let you pass based on that alone. That’s less likely for calculus, where a conceptual understanding of advanced math is the entire goal. But conceptually, differential equations is much more difficult than calculus, especially if you take anything past the first introductory course in it.
Intro Diff eq is easier than intro multi in my opinion.
I found DiffEq a challenge (in class where I got a decent grade… then more so later when I didn’t intuitively know how to use it as a tool in other classes.). That’s how I knew that I would probably not like MechE grad school.
I will note that learning the theory of DiffEqs is probably the most painful part. Once you know that, and the general behavior of common PDEs, you can efficiently use the numerical solution and that takes most of the pain out of it.