<p>so i have an actual college, calculus textbook, but it is kind of difficult to teach myself with (especially since only the odd answers are given)...</p>
<p>so i was wondering if you all had any suggestions for books that i can use to teach myself calc...not just the super-simple conceps, but something that would prepare me very well for calc in college. i would really like to get a headstart with this as i will most likely take both calc 1 and physics 1 (co-requisites) first semester in the fall.</p>
<p>yea. everything you have learned comes to a head once you hit calculus. i suck at inverse trig so i am glad we didnt do that in cal 1 and it is the reason i am not taking cal 2.</p>
<p>Brushing up on your Algebra would definitily help. The people that have struggled in my Calc class are the people that had trouble with the Algebra invovled in doing integration etc.</p>
<p>yup yup. Also, make sure you have people who can help you. There are some things you just can't learn from a book (ie, seing a graph drawn [the action itself] in Calc helped me a lot, and a book can't draw things for you). Hearing someone "talk" it to you will be very helpful. Do you have a good relationship with any math teachers who you could go to if you have problems understanding something?</p>
<p>Go to amazon.com and search for some prep-books, I am tryin' to review Pre-Calc and Algebra( I& II) before takin' my school placement exam. Good Luck :) Most def. check out math prep books on amazon.com though, also, there are reviews on some of the books.</p>
<p>The AP review books are quite good... much much easier to teach yourself out of than a normal textbook just not as many problems.
Barron's if you're planning on Engineering or Physics
Princeton Review otherwise
(I find Barron's to be unnecessarily difficult)</p>
<p>I taught myself calc out of Barron's and got a 5.</p>
<p>The ESSENTIAL calc textbook is the one written by Thomas/Finney.
It's at a high level but if you want a rigorous companion to other books, this is the one. It even covers most multivariable concepts, if you want to go that far.</p>
<p>If you want to self-study, I think there are better things to review than calculus. The amount of time it may take to learn a little bit of calculus without a teacher/professor is probably large enough that it's not worth trying. As someone mentioned above, review algebra and maybe some trig (at least the graphs, etc.) and learn calc from a professor. </p>
<p>I was in multivariable this year and single-variable in high school, and I never read or learned anything from the book - the material can be very complex and it's much better (at least for me) to learn it in lecture format. You can use the book for practice problems once you learn the material.</p>