<p>I'm a high school junior trying to self-study Calculus BC using prep books. But I heard that self-studying calculus from prep book isn't good and I need a real textbook like Stewart to gain a firm grasp of calculus, which is really important to do well in higher level science and math courses in university.</p>
<p>Previously I took an honors math course and did well in it. Someone at my school who took AP Calculus BC course told me his AP Calc BC teacher never made the class to read the text, saying that the textbook was used only for homework problems. Then I had a chance to look at many of the teacher's class notes. I compared them with some of the best prep books like Princeton Review and Peterson and the contents and all the other stuff were similar.</p>
<p>If the AP Calc BC course at school doesn't make you read textbook but just gives you notes like those in prep books, then isn't taking the course at school similar to using prep books to self-study it, and therefore you can't say self-studying AP Calc BC just from prep books will cost you later in university, because there's no considerable difference between taking the course at school and self-studying from prep books?</p>
<p>In fact, I know a lot of people who self-studied using only prep books and got 5s. Then they consistently did well in upper level science and math courses at university. Even so, does using prep book for self-studying AP Calc BC really lower your performance later in university?</p>
<p>Have you EVER read a math textbook? I really doubt it. You don't read math books, you use them. The only reason I would read the math book was for homework problems and examples, and therefore everything was taught TO me. It's a completely different process reading a prep book versus having a teacher explain every principle, every concept and have him/her answer questions you may have. Do you think you would have been able to understand any of your previous math courses without the help of the teacher?? I bet if you read a book about multiplication in the 2nd grade, you definitely would have been able to understand it...right?! </p>
<p>I'm sure some people do just fine just self-studying...but you can't argue that a class would be on the same level (unless you had a terrible teacher).</p>
<p>I took AP Calculus BC course at my school and used PR and Peterson at the same time. Though you certainly can't say that a class and prep book are on the SAME level, I thought the prep books actually were equally as good as our calc teacher at teaching or explaining principles and concepts. In some cases, the prep books were even better than the teacher, but I can't remember any instances where the prep books were worse than the teacher. The prep books also answered my questions really well. The reason for all these is probably because most authors of the prep books (not ALL the prep books out there, but only the best ones like PR) are great teachers or professors themselves at their school or university.</p>
<p>i'm taking something similar to BC at one of the better UCs, it's very different from high school BC. the teacher spends half the time on proofs. so there, that's the difference. real college class, you learn proofs. but other than that, same material. high school teacher is more approachable, i say easier than in college.</p>
<p>It won't make much difference, if any, to your overall understanding and ability of calculus to learn the proofs in addition to just techniques and problem-solving skills. At the moment of learning the proofs, it would feel like you’re learning at the deeper level and therefore increasing your calculus skills even more. But after quite a while, like a year or two, you would forget most or even all of the proofs anyway, so why’s there a need to learn them? Just like you, I've seen many people who self-studied using just the prep books or who took an AP Calculus BC class at high school consistently do well in advanced math and science courses in university. My school’s calculus teacher also told us that it’s been found that AP calculus students who either self-studied using prep books or took course in high school generally do better than those who took first-year calculus course in their first year of university. Why would anyone say not reading the Calculus textbook to learn the proofs but just using the prep books to self-study will cost you later in university? In my experience, not reading the textbook will NOT cost you, if you use good prep books properly. For example, some people use AP Calc BC prep books to just “pass” the test. This isn’t the proper way to use the prep books. They may get a high score on the exam, but their real ability of calculus will be lacking and therefore have difficulty on upper level math and science courses later in college. On various problems, they may have just plugged in numbers to formulae or memorized problem-solving processes without knowing the mathematical reason of why they were used. But if you choose good prep books like Peterson or PR and use them properly, trying to understand the reason behind why certain techniques were used for certain problems (good prep books explain these well), then not reading the textbook will not cost you. Reading just the good prep books will be fine. Just be aware of the prep books that only try to “train” you to do problems without explaining you about meanings, concepts and theories behind them.</p>
<p>I taught myself alot of calculus prior to taking a class that is about equivalent if not more difficult than the BC exam. So far I have found that I understand the mateial better from the textbook I used than from in class explanations. My suggestion is to use a textbook, I used Stewarts and found it excellent, and make sure you understand all of the proofs and theorems as well as working through a significant number of practise problems. If necessary, you can buy the solutions manual to the textbook and work through thode problems or you can use the prep book soley for practice.</p>
<p>TI_2006: Really? But there are people like ysk1 who say prep books teach you Calculus better than the textbook does. Oh well, I guess it all depends on the person..</p>
<p>Maybe math does better with textbooks than prep books, but history, psychology, etc. are better done with just prep books. At least PR has gotten me 5's in history the past two years, and I never read the textbook given or really listened in class.</p>