calculus

[mollykins]

How hard is it?

we'll be doing it some time between january and june and it'll be on one of my maths papers in june. However there's a book about it that's a self-teaching guide which I could refer to if I get stuck, however it's 342 pages long! What kind of equation takes that long to explain how to do! although it does say it teaches you integral and defferential calculus . . . .

[mollykins]

My mum keeps complaing about that, however there are something where the opposite is true. My mum recalls that some of the stuff that was at a-level, I did last years . . .

[vascop]

I think it's a good idea to think about the calculus in visual or geometric terms and then you can get a handle on it, so:
Differential calculus is calculating the slope of the tangent to a curve.
Integral calculus is finding the area between a curve and the x-axis.

[jake-the-peg]

Molly calculus is one of those areas in maths that is really easy to start and almost impossibple to master.

I taught myself the basics when I was 14 and thouight how clever I was - Oh how little I knew!

Here's a start

The speed of a car changes with time

v=t² v is the velocity and t is the time

to find it's acceleration we differentiate with respect to time

This simply involves reducing the square from 2 to 1 and multiplying by it

Acceleration = 2t

Simples!

Now you're as clever as I was at 14

Now there's just another 20 years to go

[cpedw]

I agree with Vascop - to understand calculus you need to start with graphs. Ask the teacher if they don't automatically use graphs to explain it. This works for both integration and differentiation. Then follow the rules to get to the answer. But that's easier when you understand what's going on.