<p>I feel really behind on my math courses. Im a rising junior and right now going to take pre-calc next year. I really want to take Calculus, but I'm not sure how. I am going to talk to my counselor soon. Is it feasible for me to skip pre-calc and go right to calculus? What if I take pre-calculus the same time as Calc AB? I wanna take AB next year and do BC senior year. Thanks for helping!</p>
<p>Definately in the same position as you are ^
Just because our school’s precalc teacher quit and there is no one taking the job.</p>
<p>^Ouch… and right before school starts?</p>
<p>If your serious about skipping precalc, you better have a solid background on Trig which is basically what you learn In precalc (maybe in some advanced alg 2 class supplemented with trig). Other than that I really did not find anything you absolutely need to know from precalc before ap calc ab … Most of everything you learn in ap calc is “new” stuff and it doesn’t really build upon your prior math knowledge but rather unifies it all. Any more questions I can help you , I took ap calc Ab but not bc</p>
<p>@jdroidxw-In Alg II this year, we did some stuff with trig (unit circle, law of sines and cosines, i forgot what else…:P). Does pre-calc go very in depth with trig? Will what I have learned already be enough?</p>
<p>That’s basically all you need to know is unit circle (memorize that because you will not be able to use a calculator on half the ap exam) and some trig identities. That’s really all you need to know because in calculus you learn about derivatives/integrals of trig which is the “new” stuff. I think you should be alright skipping precalc. Precalc does go a lot more in depth for trig but nothing you will need to use most of the time just memorize the trig identities and basic geometry formulas (for related rates and optimization problems)</p>
<p>I was in an accelerated program that combined some trig with algebra 2 and skipped precalc. We missed some precalc topics and some algebra 2 topics that the less advanced class learned, but I was fine in calc this year. I had to know a bit of trig in the beginning of the year, but it was very simple and would be pretty easy to learn. I can’t comment on the AP program, my school doesn’t offer AP classes.</p>
<p>When will you ever use any of this stuff in real life?</p>
<p>I have already. I used basic trig in middle school to measure height of rocket launched. In high school, I used Snells law (trig involved) to measure density of unknown liquids for my science project which was denied because it was a “dangerous” project lol. I use calculus for many things in life such as in stock market.</p>
<p>How is calculus used in the stock market?</p>
<p>Dang, I guess these things have a lot of uses after all, if you know how to apply them and create equations. I just can’t see the average person ever getting to a proficient enough level to do, though. Probably only useful for scientist types.</p>
<p>It’s difficult the way I do it, I use bunch of graphing programs and such but basically it’s simply finding the max/min based on past trajectories and that’s all about derivatives. I wasn’t very successful though predicting the 512 point drop currently :/</p>
<p>how much trig is needed for a calculus class?</p>
<p>Yah I think I will go ahead and try to convince my counselor to let me skip pre-calc. I really want to take calc this year because next year I’m planning on taking Physics C, which I heard is calculus based. Plus, I don’t think trig is that hard, and from what it sounds like, I think I will do fine in Calc AB. Thanks for the advice everyone! :)</p>