<p>My AP Calculus AB class was taught the same as yours davidthefat, and I too hated just being given formulas without having the concepts explained thoroughly. My favorite math class was Pre-Calc, specifically the trig part, because the teacher always made sure that that we understood conceptually why X or Y equation gave us this. Integration was the hardest part of Calc for me, but that might have been a function of Senioritis.</p>
<p>I’ve actually enjoyed Calculus, but maybe that was because I had arguably the best math professor at my university for Calc II (integrals, series, etc.). But to me, Calc II definitely felt like the gateway between “normal” everyday math, and engineering math.</p>
<p>I think the toughest part was the realization of just how complicated the math was going to be, and that it really wasn’t like anything I had seen previously. It takes a while to wrap your head around it, but I think it is very cool to be able to do something that most people have trouble comprehending on a basic level.</p>
Epsilon-Delta proofs have more to do with a course called Real Analysis rather than Calculus. The proofs are hard because of just that, they’re proofs, you have to prove that given an epsilon or given a delta you can find a value in the other region whether it be epsilon or delta, but there’s a general guideline that you can follow in order to solve for it, which is fairly straightforward but it did take me a while to grasp how to solve those problems.
Thread’s been dead 4 years. 