Jump to content

Menu

Calculus for a Whole to Parts learner?


Recommended Posts

My dh will be taking Calculus in the fall. He's been studying over the past semester with a Calculus text, he's got Life of Fred Calculus, and the Teaching Company Calculus DVDs. He's still frustrated because he can't see the big picture.

 

Is there something that y'all would recommend for him that would explain the big picture of Calculus?

 

I'm of no help. I'm on Life of Fred Fractions :lol:.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't want to discourage you, but if he is not getting the text, and getting it fast, you may not have a calculus guy..... if he has to take it, then you are smart to prep him first. I would suggest you springing for Chalkdust.com Calculus 1 dvds, they will sell them separately. My son is whole to part, homeschooled through 12th grade, we got as far as precalc. (and we sweat blood to get him that far....). He is not good with all of those tedious details. He tested ready for calculus, he got his first ever C in Calc. 1, and failed Calc. 2. He is doing summer school to salvage a scholarship, taking poetry and drawing, and is much happier! We have a arts/language/ideas guy!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't want to discourage you, but if he is not getting the text, and getting it fast, you may not have a calculus guy..... if he has to take it, then you are smart to prep him first. I would suggest you springing for Chalkdust.com Calculus 1 dvds, they will sell them separately. My son is whole to part, homeschooled through 12th grade, we got as far as precalc. (and we sweat blood to get him that far....). He is not good with all of those tedious details. He tested ready for calculus, he got his first ever C in Calc. 1, and failed Calc. 2. He is doing summer school to salvage a scholarship, taking poetry and drawing, and is much happier! We have a arts/language/ideas guy!

 

I think once he gets the big picture explained, he'll be fine (he's actually an engineer, but is back in college working on an engineering degree one class at a time).

 

I'll look into chalkdust! Thanks :D.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

May I just issue a cautionary note that getting the big picture of Calculus may not help him pass the course. I could sit down with your son for 30 minutes to explain the "big picture" of differential and integral Calculus, but he won't know any of the techniques, which is really what the Calculus sequence teaches. That said, I think that it is admirable to get as much of a handle on things now as possible. Any weaknesses in algebra or trig will surface immediately in Calculus. (A long time ago I spent a Christmas break with a trig book to teach myself what I had missed in the subject. Missing connections in trig caused me to miss connections in my Calculus class.)

 

Some of the precalculus texts have sections on limits. He might want to spend some time with limits since this will be one of the first topics he'll encounter in the fall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

May I just issue a cautionary note that getting the big picture of Calculus may not help him pass the course. I could sit down with your son for 30 minutes to explain the "big picture" of differential and integral Calculus, but he won't know any of the techniques, which is really what the Calculus sequence teaches. That said, I think that it is admirable to get as much of a handle on things now as possible. Any weaknesses in algebra or trig will surface immediately in Calculus. (A long time ago I spent a Christmas break with a trig book to teach myself what I had missed in the subject. Missing connections in trig caused me to miss connections in my Calculus class.)

 

Some of the precalculus texts have sections on limits. He might want to spend some time with limits since this will be one of the first topics he'll encounter in the fall.

 

 

It's my husband, not my son (my oldest is only 9 :001_smile:). He's back in college going for another degree. With study he aced Algebra & Pre-Calc, but Calculus is giving him fits. He dropped Calculus in the spring because of a poorly organized teacher, so he's been self-teaching as much as possible until he starts again in the fall so he's not as dependent on the teacher.

 

Knowing it's an adult who has returned to college....does that change anything you'd recommend?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's my husband, not my son (my oldest is only 9 :001_smile:). He's back in college going for another degree. With study he aced Algebra & Pre-Calc, but Calculus is giving him fits. He dropped Calculus in the spring because of a poorly organized teacher, so he's been self-teaching as much as possible until he starts again in the fall so he's not as dependent on the teacher.

 

Knowing it's an adult who has returned to college....does that change anything you'd recommend?

 

Ahh...now I see.

 

When I taught adults the Calculus sequence in an engineering program sponsored by a corporation, there was a great deal of frustration on methodology of college classroom teachers. Adults are used to say Microsoft people coming in and doing a class. The point of a vender is to make the students as comfortable with the product as quickly as possible. College classroom teachers only lead students to the water--they want students to have their aha! moments. My compromise was to write "user friendly" classnotes for them, trying to put concepts in plain English, giving examples with more steps for them to follow. Granted, I did a whole lot more hand holding than the average Calculus teacher.

 

Perhaps he can find an engineer or a Geek like me with whom he can get together once a week for coffee and calculus. Not a tutor, per se, but someone who can go beyond the algorithm to say this is what is really happening here.

 

I wish him well.

 

Jane

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have heard that community college calculus is easier than 4 yr. college calculus and the credits are the same. Unfortunately we only have a technical college (that doesn't have calculus) and a 4 yr. That teacher was HARD, no curve, 18 more points would have been a D, which at least still awards the credit. If he has a teacher choice, be sure to ask around for the best teacher!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fellow students were a big help to me in doing well in some of my classes. Sometimes it took a while, but I usually managed to find people who were doing about as well as I was and with whom I worked well. We explained things to each other and checked our homework answers against each other.

 

I remember being confused at the beginning of calculus--probably because I also didn't have the big picture. I couldn't figure out what the point was! Once I got that down, I did fine. I'm hoping to at least do an introductory calculus w/ dd before she leaves home so that she'll have the big picture before she starts a university calculus class.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To make a long story short, he flunked it the first semester because he wouldn't let me explain the point of calculus. The second semester, he finally let me explain and he did fine. The explanation took about 15 minutes. I had had calculus the previous year, in high school. My textbook began with a very difficult chapter that explained what the point of calculus, at least the first bit that we studied, was (the bit about e), and then we spent the rest of the year juggling equations and learning the details of how to use this information (the part Jane is talking about, maybe?). His book, on the other hand, had that chapter LAST. In my opinion, that was a major mistake. I tell this story so in case your husband is having the same problem my husband did. Perhaps he can reread the first chapter of the book a few times, or go looking for a calculus book in the library that begins with that chapter. I've forgotten calculus, except for remembering that it was very useful for figuring out how things were changing in physics, and doing things like finding the volume of the intersection of two broomsticks if you pushed one into the other at right angles, and that it involved slicing things into infinately small slices and then adding up the slices. I'm sure someone like Jane could describe the point of that initial chapter well enough that your husband could find it, read it, and see if it helped.

I feel totally stupid posting this, having forgotten so much... Maybe it will help, though.

-Nan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All I remember [from college] is that I did well with differential calculus (first semester), but horribly with integral calculus (second semester). I could destroy things just fine, but could not reassemble them ! :D

 

So, in other words entropy wins again! Thanks for the chuckle.

 

Regards,

Kareni

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My two cents having had to "learn" calculus along with my ds (and my brain is ancient...)....find a link to the Dr. Ed Burger videos for calculus. They are superb, offer humor and context for the large amount of method that Jane rightly mentions and they are easy to sue. Thinkwell.com sells the program for homeschoolers but you can likely find the cd's for sale for a lot less or even a link to a few to see if they might be suitable. I sympatize with your hubbie!! Good luck!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...