pre calc help!

<p>Ok so my academic situation is really complicated so I don’t really want to get into that, but my problem is that I’m skipping pre calc and jumping straight to calc 1 for the fall, because i need the class to be on my app.</p>

<p>to help my situation I’ve bought the pre calc book, gotten the pre calc syllabus (so I know what I should be learning and know all the homework), I’ve gotten all the tests/pre tests/quizzes from a pre calc teacher, and I plan on trying to do all that before calc 1.</p>

<p>I’ve read some threads on here with people saying they’re excited for calc one in the fall...So I’m guessing that’s implying that they’ve had a great mathematic record so far lol.</p>

<p>So I was wondering if anyone could advise me...letting me know if im crazy or not...i figure if my trig and algebra are strong, ill be able to get through.</p>

<p>Or maybe someone on here is a WONDERFUL note taker and could someway help me?!!!! Please help!</p>

<p>I know couple of people at my cc who tried to skip precal and jumped to calc, the only problem they faced was with trig. I personally feel I can’t learn the material as well unless I take the course and see it for weeks, but thats just me. Without going off topic, you could survive calc if you do what you have planned, which is review the material and prepare yourself for calc. Make sure if you are going on in calc, know your trig. Other than that I think you’ll be fine. Good luck.</p>

<p>Are you going to enroll in CC this fall or what?</p>

<p>thankkss! yeah, i plan on drilling myself with trig. the teacher i intend totake the course with has a 15% extra credit option…that i plan to take advantage of because i want an Although that may seem a little unfair, it is what it is : )</p>

<p>thanks for the reply again</p>

<p>no im applying to UCs this fall. the only reason why im pushing myself to take the class early is because i need the class to be seen on my application</p>

<p>you don’t really need to know much about trig to do well in calc. Your teacher should go over what is important.</p>

<p>some things in trig are not really necessary, like the law of cosines and whatever, but it’s good to have a solid foundation if you plan on going into something like engineering. You’re gonna need to know the trig functions and their inverses too, like sin, cos, tan, csc, sec, cot, whatever. Probably things like half angle formulas, and other identities, but do you need to take an entire semester for it? Nah. If you had the choice and time, I would though.</p>

<p>thanks for the replys again.</p>

<p>but yeah i would definitely want to take pre calc if i had the time,but i dont. gotta make the most of it :)</p>

<p>You’re going to start the course off with basic precalc stuff. The thing is, the calculus is the easy part of the course. If you’re good at algebra, then everything will be fine. I didn’t take precalc or trig in college, and I pretty much just passed those courses during high school, but I got an A in Calc 1 after studying intensely.</p>

<p>is there anything that will be essential that i will die without?</p>

<p>You’ll definitely need to know the unit circle, but if you know how to convert degrees to radians, you’ll get by. Unit circle tricks are very helpful. Just make sure you pay attention to the concepts, they are important.</p>

<p>If you’re stopping at Calc I, you’ll probably be fine without precalc. If you’re going on to Calc II, you’re screwed without a solid foundation in trig. They’ll go into trionometric substitution in that class, and it really helps to understand why you’re substituting and what function to substitute.</p>

<p>That being said, I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten 90% of what I learned in trig. But I’m really really good at the 10% I still remember. Algebra is going to be your main obstacle. The algebra can get crazy (believe it or not). I’ve learned way more about algebra in calc than I ever did in an algebra class.</p>

<p>lol, I don’t think this is gonna work. I took pre-cal, and I didn’t make it past the trig test. This doesn’t seem like a good idea, and you may be setting yourself up for failure. Why can’t you just take pre-cal next semester, and calc in the spring?</p>

<p>I am in a similar situation. I skipped trig to take calculus I this summer. </p>

<p>The text is Calculus by Larson. My plan before the class starts is

  1. Complete Appendix C, which contains all of the precalculus they want you to know to be successful with their book
  2. After completing Appendix C, spend 1-2 hours a day getting a head start. </p>

<p>It really varies for every person, but I think in most cases it is possible. A few of my friends did it successfully. Meet with your professor during office hours or get a tutor in the worst case scenario.</p>

<p>lol IM NOT SKIPPING TRIG!im taking a trig class…i wouldnt set myself up for something THAT bad…</p>

<p>its just precalc that im skipping</p>

<p>the text the precalc teacher wants me to use is: Precalculas: A problem-Oriented Approach, by Cohen</p>

<p>But I thought that at most schools, Pre-cal is Algebra & Trigonometry.</p>

<p>at my CC they split the two.
the sequence is</p>

<p>int algebra
trig
pre calc
calc 1
2
3
and so on</p>

<p>I think they are going to split the pre-cal class into 2 next semester at my CC. I took it as a one semester 5 unit class. It didn’t work out for me.</p>

<p>All you really need to know to pass calc 1 from trig is the unit circle. im not joking. you need to be good in algebra though… other than that calc 1 is easy just dont make the same mistake i did which was to over complicate things.</p>