Just finished calc 2 starting calc 3 tomorrow for summer session. Was calc 2 or 3 harder for you and why...

Calc 2 was the hardest math I took during my undergrad. Calc 3 was easy by comparison.

What the fuck is "Calc 2" and "Calc 3" ??

Use the fucking names of your courses so we understand what the fuck you are talking about!

t. math major

Does Calculus 2 mean integral single variable calculus? Linear algebra? Multi-variable calculus? Differential forms and advanced analysis? What the fuck are you talking about?

I took 1 calculus class, then a class which was called "honors calc." and covered baby rudin, then 2 real analysis courses, PDEs and complex analysis.

What do you mean "calc 2" and "calc 3".
Are you in high school?

Do you people all go to the same university?
What the fuck are you talking about?

I think calc 3 is hard if you can draw a triangle in the xyz plane and convert coordinate using it/know system to integrate in, cuz everything else about it is irrefutably easy

Would it be possible to make an A in calc 2 over a summer semester with little prior knowledge?

imo if and only if its the only class you're taking

It will be. I intend to get a BS in physics if, and only if, I can ace it.

Can anyone give recommendations for resources or what to study over the next 2 weeks before classes start?

My guess is calculus II is AP calculus BC (slightly more difficult integrals, Simpson's rule, finding the volume of a graph rotated around the x or y axis, series and sequences, etc.) and calculus III is multivariate calculus (the same as single variable, just in 3 dimensions (maybe more, but that's usually vector calculus (calculus IV?)). OP, correct me if I'm wrong. I had a class that sounds like "honors calc", but it was called advanced calculus and was basically an introduction to real analysis and followed vector calculus (called calculus of several variables). Props to you doing the year of real analysis and then complex analysis, I decided that I wanted no more analysis after advanced calculus, so I focused on systems and linear algebra/number theory.

Assuming calculus III is an introduction to multivariate calculus, no it isn't too bad. It is more difficult to picture stuff in 3D, but the concepts remain the same. You have stuff like double/triple integrals and partial derivatives which are the same idea as stuff from single variable calculus. Basically, it's calculus I in 3D. I know a lot of people struggle with calculus II.

That's weird. I could see calculus I & II jammed into one semester, but not the second half of single variable calculus and multivariable calculus.

You must not have been a math major, lol. If so, did you really find calculus II to be harder than analysis?

I think calculus I, II, and III are defined here or at least that's my stab at it.

Guys, need halp. I learn english by reading books, soi need school math books to read. Basic stuff. Which are best?

Did you do well in calculus I? If so, then yeah, probably. The biggest difficulty you'll probably see is the algebra. Everyone fucks up on the algebra, so you need to be careful with it.

What class do you want to study? What math classes have you taken?

ENG2005 Advanced Engineering Mathematics
Synopsis:
Advanced matrix algebra: mxn systems, linear independence, sparse matrices, simple tensors. Further ordinary differential equations: systems of ODEs, variation of parameters; boundary-value problems. Fourier series: Euler formulae, convergence, half-range series, solution of ODEs, spectra. Further multivariable calculus: change of variables and chain rule, polar coordinates, line integrals; vector fields; del, divergence, curl and Laplacian; surface and volume integrals; Gauss and Stokes theorems. Partial differential equations: simple PDEs, Laplace, heat and wave equations, superposition, separation of variables, polar coordinates. Advanced numerical methods: solution of linear systems, numerical solution of ODEs and simple PDEs, accuracy, efficiency and stability; discrete Fourier transforms, introduction to PS and FE methods.

What is this in US terms? I got 60% in my last math class, am I fucked?

Khan is cool for school terms. Also you'll learn pronunciation.

I think i dont need algebra, trigonometry, geometry also.
Thanks a lot!

Ok, so you've taken those classes? As a quick test, are you familiar with limits (particularly of rational functions, ie. something like (x + 5)/(x^2 - 1)? Do you feel comfortable with trig functions and identities, ie. sin(2x) = 2sin(x)cos(x)? If so, then you're probably ready for calculus and/or introductory linear algebra. Khan Academy is really good for stuff like this. At this level, it doesn't really matte what textbook you have (provided it's the right topic). That only become important when you get to proof-based mathematics.

What was your last math? Did you get a 60 because you were lazy and didn't go to class or because you actually struggled with the material? If you're comfortable with vector algebra (dot product, cross product, etc.) and multivariate calculus then vector fields won't be bad. If you're good with matrix operations (particularly invertibility and eigenvalues/eigenvectors) then systems of ODEs and matrix algebra won't be bad. I don't think you need anything else for Fourier series, and line and surface integrals and Stoke's and Green's theorems only really require you to be good with integrals in multivariate calculus. PDEs are going to suck, but they suck for everyone.

Bit of both. I had an 8 year gap between high school and first year undergrad so I started off a bit behind and never fully caught up. Vectors and matrices were ok, hyperbolic functions were ok, I didn't really get sequences and series, improper integrals or ordinary diff eqs.

lol no, it must be
>I think i need algebra, trigonometry, geometry
at first i think to write what i dont need, arithmetics for example, but forgot delete 'i dont need'
so stupid of me

Sequences and series aren't too important for this. You can learn that pretty quickly online anyway. You'll want to go back over ODEs (separation of variables, integrating coefficients, and variation of parameters), systems of ODEs generally don't use this stuff (I never saw it after my 2000 level diff eq class) as you usually find fixed points and the eigenvalues of the matrix A to determine stability. Improper integrals probably won't be super important, but it would probably be ideal to go back over them (basically you just treat it like a limit and see if you can get the 1/0s to cancel out, Paul's online notes and SOS math have good sections on this). You should be alright, but I'd definitely recommend you go over the stuff I mentioned.

Oh, ok, so you need Algebra I & II, geometry and precalculus (generally includes trigonometry). You want Khan Academy, that guy's the man. The first link contains everything except geometry and trigonometry, but he has geometry and trigonometry in the second link. I wouldn't recommend getting a book (I wouldn't know which one to recommend) unless you really really do better with a book you can hold in your hands (I do). See how Khan works, he does a good job explaining stuff, I used him for some linear algebra stuff.

Thanks bro. I'll be trying to do some study between semesters so this will help.
Do you know of any examples that relate this kind of math to real world stuff? I have trouble with math if I can't visualise what it physically represents. Even stuff like derivatives/integrals being gradients of/area under a graph and trig functions drawn on the unit circle helps me a lot

Whoops, I forgot to remove the < and >s, just copy the stuff inside them. What grade are you in?

Yeah, so for systems of ODEs you have all sorts of things. I had a mathematical modeling class that was huge on sysems of ODEs. Everything from modeling HIV in the human body, modeling an outbreak or some disease, modeling a predetor and prey in the wild uses them. You can also use them to model the movement of a pendulum or really anything. PDEs are also useful, you see them when modeling heat on a 1D (or higher dimension, but that becomes a pain in the ass) rod with respect to time, t. Curl, del, and lapacian operators are a bit more abstract, but I had a professor who was modeling blood flow in the human body and found that if the flow had a curl greater than 0 (or 1 I can't remember) there was large damage done to blood vessels. Gradients are useful for modeling force due to gravity on a landscape. Lots of things in electricity and magnetism use line and surface integrals, but I don't quite remember the details of that. Matrices can be super useful for storing a lot of data in a single structure (a lot of programming languages are built from matrices and vectors, like matlab, for instance) and are crucial for solving systems of ODEs. I don't know too much about them (I was a math major not an EE or computer engineer), but I believe Fourier series are a crucial part of the Fourier transform process which is useful for simplifying/modeling an electric signal.

Yes, but it's been 4 years.

I didn't engage with it so I didn't really learn it "well" though.

Fair enough, do you remember the core concepts well (what is a derivative conceptually, how to calculate the derivative for a variety of functions, the fundamental theorem of calculus, what is an integral conceptually, some integrals (generally just polynomials), the applications (ie. a cylindrical tank with some dimensions is filling with water at a rate, dV/dt, what is the rate the height is changing?), stuff like that)? I don't know how they break down calculus I vs calculus II, you might just need the derivative portion. If you need a refresher, Khan Academy is great.

khanacademy.org/math/differential-calculus

I live in Australia too :) just finished eng2091, 2nd year mech eng

just make sure you understand what a scalar field and vector field are, and how they are different. Your course has nearly unlimited applications as pointed out. It's very useful in modeling a system especially, but the best way to truly understand the mathematics behind the system is to understand the basic definitions and be able to visualize them and how they interact with the system itself.

Also, it's best to brush up on double & triple integrals; learn how to set the bounds correctly because that's the biggest problems students come across when applying Stokes theorem or Divergence theorem. Don't worry about practicing any of the advanced stuff, there's plenty of time to go over that in the class during the semester.

How's mech? I'm submitting my discipline preferences this month, was planning on civil but the mech part of ENG1001 was really fun. Plus I did fluid mechanics as my first year elective for some reason.

calc3 is different.
I had a harder time with it but I think it was the professor not the subject matter. (really it was more how he organized the class than his lectures, which I thought where awesome)

Im the student who thought precal was the most challeging of the three because so much new material is covered.

3 was harder for me, but not bad. I took 1 and 2 at a community college with a shitty, watered down math department. Compared to what I see them cover in 1 and 2 at my 4 year school though, I think 3 is easier. I was doing just fine in the class until the final bent me over and had its way with me ;_;

I had a harder time learning the stuff we didn't cover in 2 at my CC (like cramming series and some graphing stuff) in a few days, so I'd go with 2 for being more difficult.

Diff Eqs>Linear Algebra>Calc 2 in terms of high to low difficulty.

Which linear algebra? Is that an actual linear algebra where you talk theory about stuff like vector spaces and span as it relates to the dimension of these spaces or is it just the very basic solving systems of linear equations via Ax=b? I can promise that linear algebra gets much much more difficult as you progress.