<p>I am planning to self study AP Calculus AB over the summer to take AP Calculus BC in school next year. I have never had any understanding the topics in Alg 2/Trig by just reading the book. (My school does not have precalculus in between) Do you think this is easily doable?
I do not want to take a CC class because I will be in China for half of it.</p>
<p>I’m doing the same thing, except I took Pre Calculus this year. For Pre Calc, I’d recommend getting Barron’s Pre Calculus: The Easy Way. For AP Calculus, I’d get the Princeton Review and Peterson’s books, those are the ones I plan on getting and seem to be highly recommended.</p>
<p>I don’t need precalc. What do you even study in precalc? Isn’t it an extension of algebra 2 + trig?</p>
<p>Right on! I’m considering doing the same myself. But just so I know, what the heck’s a “CC class”?</p>
<p>^Community College Class.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that the Saxon Math books are good for self-teaching, and they do publish a book on Calculus. You might want to try and find a copy.</p>
<p>I am studying AP Calc also this summer. I borrowed a calc book from my teacher in the spring, but I had to give it back before I could finish integrals :(. So I am looking for a decent book too. </p>
<p>I am also self-studying AP physics B and hoping to integrate calc and maybe take the C test next spring.
you guys might want to take a look at this:
[YouTube</a> - khanacademy’s Channel](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy#p/c/19E79A0638C8D449]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy#p/c/19E79A0638C8D449)</p>
<p>if you don’t understand alg 2/trig you’re going to have an extremely difficult time learning calculus.</p>
<p>Well, some topics of precalculus are necessary, like polar and parametric functions, which are BC topics. Moreover, if you don’t understand algebra 2 or trigonometry, you will be lacking the foundation to do calculus and you will end up like most of the struggling AP Calculus AB students at my school.</p>
<p>The text by Larson/Hostetler/Edwards is very good if you want a basic introduction to the material that covers what’s on the test. You can probably get a cheap used edition online. The older the edition, the better.</p>
<p>There are also some excellent free texts that provide slightly more rigor:
[Free</a> Online Course Materials | Textbook | MIT OpenCourseWare](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-001-calculus-online-textbook-spring-2005/textbook/]Free”>Textbook | Calculus Online Textbook | Supplemental Resources | MIT OpenCourseWare)
[Elementary</a> Calculus](<a href=“http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html]Elementary”>Elementary Calculus)</p>
<p>To be honest, you could probably learn enough to pass the test from a good prep book. However, this way is more fun :)</p>
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<p>Agree. This is the calculus book that helped me receive a 5 when I self-studied for the AP Calculus AB exam. Moreover, the chapter on Series helped me understand the topic for the BC exam. However, the textbook doesn’t emphasize much on Lagrange error.</p>
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Really? I thought the proof in - if I remember correctly - section 9.7 was very clear, and I know I remember a number of questions on the topic.</p>
<p>The book does teach Lagrange error and has two great examples of it, but there were not a lot of problems to help drill the concept into my head. Moreover, I was restricted to odd-number problems since I do not have the answer book for the even-number problems.</p>
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Fair enough. The availability of free resources with problems is wide enough that I don’t really worry about whether the book has many exercises on a particular topic - the clarity of the proofs is more important.</p>