Question for those who took all 3 levels of Calculus

<p>Of the three levels you took, which do you think was the easiest/"a walk in the park."</p>

<p>FOr me, it's Calculus 3 aka Multivariable Calculus. While I haven't officially taken the course yet at my school, I taught myself the material through youtube (UC Berkeley Lecture) and an online textbook and it honestly has been a breeze. While I may have needed a question or two clarifying things here, the material was pretty straight forward. I definitely think Calc 3 is the easiest of the 3 major levels.</p>

<p>I’m registered to take Calc III this fall… </p>

<p>I’ve taken both AP Calcs and IB HL Math, covering Calc 1/2, and have been going over Calc III material through youtube (MIT lectures).</p>

<p>IMO, all three aren’t that bad… Calc 1 you learn the basics (derivatives, integrals), Calc II covers complex integration and series and sequences, Calc III is Calc I in three dimensions.</p>

<p>I can’t say which is the easiest, having not taken an actual Calc III course, but thus far Calc II was worse of the first two I’ve taken. I hate series and sequences with a passion.</p>

<p>I’m also taking Calc III this fall. However, AP Calc AB was super easy. Some BC topics were insane…</p>

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<p>Series and Sequences… AGH!!!</p>

<p>Series and sequences weren’t bad. </p>

<p>Polars and trig substitutions totally killed me. Like seriously, we had to memorize the names of every shape and related formulas. I was so happy there weren’t any questions about polars on the AP test. I can do most of the stuff but these two. Maybe it was just because of the teacher…</p>

<p>I think it did have to do with the teacher… </p>

<p>Our teacher hated Series and Sequences too, so i guess it kind of rubbed off on me… I took the exception test for BC, there were quite a few polar questions. I guess it’s person differs person to person. I didn’t have a problem with trig substitutions, but hated series and sequences.</p>

<p>I thought Calc 1 was easiest… Calc 2 felt trickier and my Calc 3 class was very poorly taught.</p>

<p>Calc 3 probably feels the easiest just because it’s exactly calc 1 all over again, just with another variable. So it’s relearning and extending previously taught ideas, instead of going anywhere too crazy.</p>

<p>Taylor polynomials is the worst.</p>

<p>I thought Calc 2 was a hell of alot easier than the other two. maybe thats because I had a better teacher for it. Calc 3 was especially hard for me when it came to the exams since my profs felt the need to give complicated derivatives/integrals for no real reason</p>

<p>I’m taking calc 1 this spring, I’m going to be a sophomore… any tips? Is it anything like pre-cal? I aced pre-cal, but my teacher stunk, so I didbt do very well with infinite, finite, and geometric summation. Anything like that in calculus? What’s calculus closest to? Geometry, algebra, trig…? Thanks!</p>

<p>BC sucked, 3 was hella easy, AB somewhere in between</p>

<p>Honestly, from my experience, Pre-Calculus helped me the most to understanding Multivariate Calculus. Taking away derivatives and integrals (both of which you learn in Calc I/II), Pre-Calculus contributed the most to my understanding of Multivariate topics. The three major applications in Multivariate Calculus are Vectors, Derivatives, and Integrals. Almost everything you learn in Multivariate will fall under one of these three applications. </p>

<p>Pre-Calculus (which I took senior year of HS) helped me a lot because that’s when I was first introduced to vectors, strengthened my algebra skills (which came in handy during some of the tedious problems in Multivariate), was introduced to polar coordinates, trig. techniques (i.e. sin^2 + cos^2 =1 and how to derive other formulas from that), and so much more. But this is because I had an AMAZING teacher who actually had a mathematics degree and loved her job, so it projected onto me easily. </p>

<p>None of the Calc levels in my opinion are hard but I did struggle the most in Calc I. I think if you just pay attention and practice as much as possible you’ll be fine.</p>

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Calculus is its own branch of mathematics. You will be using much of the algebra, geometry and trig you have learned, but what you are doing with it is kinda different from the math you have seen so far.</p>

<p>Calculus was the math developed to reflect that we are living in a continuous universe where things are constantly changing. Suppose you are tracing a particle whose velocity is different at each point in time: how far has it moved? How do you compute (or approximate) the volume of a general shape, not just the round and box-y things you have seen in geometry? You might also explore and learn to work with concepts such as “infinitely small”, “infinitely close”, “infinitely many”, “infinitely large”, etc. </p>

<p>Calculus will probably be the first modern math you learn! It was developed by 17th century physicists specifically to solve real-world problems. In contrast, the arithmetic, algebra and geometry stuff dates back to antiquity!!!</p>

<p>In terms of the nitty gritty of calc though… a lot of it is the standard smoke and mirrors of algebra.</p>

<p>There’s way more than three levels of calculus…they just aren’t named Calc4/Calc5/etc.</p>

<p>Calc 1 is the easiest (if u can grasp the basics)</p>

<p>Then Calc 3, because its just Calc 1 in more dimensions. It does het trickier if you take s theoretical course and when you get near the end with Stokes and Green.</p>

<p>Calc 2 is a *****. No one likes it. I had a very good math teacher and got an easy 5 on the AP though. The end of it kinda sucks. Its also a weed out class for engineers. And if your weeding out engineers, it must ne tough.</p>

<p>Calc 4 depends on your class. I took an hours theoretical version that went super far and get pretty deep. The regular versions though are just using certain steps in certain situations</p>

<p>I know that marcdvl. But as you can see, I’m not inquiring about those, I’m inquiring about the three major/popular levels blatantly named “Calc I/II/III”</p>

<p>And it’s interesting how so many people don’t like Calc II…I thought it was pretty straight forward…but then again a lot of you guys think Calc I was easy and I struggled through that the most lol.</p>

<p>For me Calc 1 was the easiest and Calc 3 was the hardest. Calc 2 was just in between for me. My grades descended one place on the scale with each class: A+ in calc 1, A in Calc 2, A- in calc 3. None of them were particularly hard for me. </p>

<p>Diff eq was rough, though. I had to drop it the first time and I barely scraped by with a C the second time around (though I did get 100% on the first test… just declined rapidly from there).</p>

<p>It’s really all about the prof…</p>

<p>AB was really easy, but I won’t compare it to 2 or 3 because comparing high school and college classes seems rather silly to me.</p>

<p>I hated calc II, because the teacher sucked. And I didn’t get the series/ sequences part (got a B+).
Calc III was a breeze, super easy (got an A).</p>

<p>Since then, I’ve taken DiffEQ, ProbStats, and a class my school calls Engineering Math. We went over the same series/sequences ideas in EnMath, but at a much higher level. There was a lot of ‘doh! how did I not get this in calc 2?’ - as I said, it was all about the prof for me.</p>

<p>Also have taken PDE’s (grad level), and am about to take another grad level eng. math class. All of this makes calc 1-3 look like kids play lol.</p>