Calc help- Larson vs DO... Thomas? Strang/ OpenStax?

[MamaSprout]

Can anyone compare these Calculus texts?

Since we are using a tutor next year, I'm looking at Larson's single variable for my dd. I have it. It looks okay. It has a lot of resources. I bought it as a reference text for Derek Owens.

Also, what little I can glean about Thomas' Calculus, it seems like it would be a good fit for DD, but there don't seem to be any resources available.

She doesn't like Edward Burger, so no Thinkwell.

She's a good math student and is excited about Calculus. Not a straight up AoPS kid, but wouldn't be happy with the cookbook math our local dual credit option offers (Bittinger/ Sullivan's essentials texts).

ETA- Has anyone used the Strang OpenStax text? I like the way the digital book doesn't show the answers in the example problems until the student clicks for the answer.

Thanks!

Edited January 31, 2020 by MamaSprout

[Arcadia]

Larson AP Calculus textbook is written very much to cater to the AP exam. DS14 didn’t mind it and he didn’t like Dr Edward Burger.

Both kids didn’t like openstax textbooks but Strang has a softcopy calculus textbook.

DS15 preferred Stewart Calculus textbooks to Larson. We have a few at home including the non-AP version. 

Edited February 1, 2020 by Arcadia
Typing error

[kiana]

I really like Thomas -- he has some great questions -- but I'd definitely put it on the "more rigorous" side. The problems really make you think about WHY things are true. 

None of the choices you've listed are weak. 

[MamaSprout]

22 minutes ago, kiana said:

I really like Thomas -- he has some great questions -- but I'd definitely put it on the "more rigorous" side. The problems really make you think about WHY things are true. 

None of the choices you've listed are weak. 

I got a hold of a cheap copy of Thomas and it does look good. I wish I could find a tutor/ teacher and/or video instructor for it. Our current tutor doesn't really want to continue into Calculus, especially DO. ETA Dd doesn't like Larson's explanations especially well.

Edited February 12, 2020 by MamaSprout

[mathnerd]

11 hours ago, kiana said:

I really like Thomas -- he has some great questions -- but I'd definitely put it on the "more rigorous" side. The problems really make you think about WHY things are true. 

None of the choices you've listed are weak. 

I used Thomas in my time to learn calculus. It is rigorous. 

I have found many parents locally who use Stewart over other texts for their AP bound kids.

[MamaSprout]

I think eventually she'll take the BC exam, but since she is still in 10th grade, I'd like for her to have the option to go deeper. I'll look at Stewart, too.

ETA- What would we do after Derek Owens AB Calc? We don't have a local DE option, and everything else is Larson. It kind of makes me think we should just go with Larson since I'll be paying a tutor already and all the tutors I can find are topping out at Calc 1.

Edited February 13, 2020 by MamaSprout

[EKS]

4 hours ago, MamaSprout said:

What would we do after Derek Owens AB Calc?

This doesn't answer your question but, I wish DO would develop a BC supplement for the AB course.

[MamaSprout]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

Oh, why doesn’t your tutor want to?

It's not the type of calc he is used to, I suspect, and since he doesn't have access to the videos and there isn't a book exactly, he feels like they are playing catch up all the time.

9 minutes ago, EKS said:

This doesn't answer your question but, I wish DO would develop a BC supplement for the AB course.

It would make life much easier for us!

Edited February 13, 2020 by MamaSprout

[EKS]

On 2/12/2020 at 3:42 AM, MamaSprout said:

Our current tutor doesn't really want to continue into Calculus, especially DO.

 

5 hours ago, square_25 said:

Oh, why doesn’t your tutor want to?

 

2 hours ago, MamaSprout said:

It's not the type of calc he is used to, I suspect, and since he doesn't have access to the videos and there isn't a book exactly, he feels like they are playing catch up all the time.

I don't think that the type of calculus has anything to do with it.  DO seems pretty standard.  Having both taught "over" and tutored "behind" DO, I know that it is essentially impossible to do without actually watching all of the videos yourself, which is enormously time consuming.  

[MamaSprout]

32 minutes ago, square_25 said:

How come?

There isn't a good way to look back at the lesson and see what the student knows. It's less of a problem in Precalculus because there is still a textbook that aligns with it, but otherwise it's only the notes the student has taken to reference back on. This does create a problem for the student, as well, because it is more difficult to determine what skill is missing if they miss a concept.

That makes Larson more attractive because it is easier to match book/ videos, etc. Dd thinks Larson is too incremental for her. She can't see the forest for the trees, I guess. Are there any providers that don't use Larson AND cover Calc 2/ Calc BC?

I really thought we would just go with DE at this point. Unfortunately, they use a Stewart Essentials book, and I've seen too many smart kids locally DE here and then find they just don't have enough foundation when they hit Calc 3 at another university that assumes they have learned more than just the "essentials".

[MamaSprout]

2 hours ago, EKS said:

 

 

I don't think that the type of calculus has anything to do with it.  DO seems pretty standard.  Having both taught "over" and tutored "behind" DO, I know that it is essentially impossible to do without actually watching all of the videos yourself, which is enormously time consuming.  

Weirdly the comments are that DO harder than it needs to be. I just think it's conceptually solid. There's a lot of cookbook calc around here.

[EKS]

1 hour ago, square_25 said:

How come?

When I teach "over" DO, I am presenting what DO presents myself, and I want to be sure that I am presenting everything he has presented.  The notes he provides are skeletal, meaning that the important stuff is omitted.  I have to find out what that stuff is.  I usually do this by watching videos and doing the problems myself (which is significantly faster), but this takes a significant amount of time no matter how you slice it.

When I tutor "behind" DO, this has always meant that I have a student who, among other things, isn't taking good notes.  So I can't use their notes as a guide to finding out what the instruction has been.  I realize that many tutors are reactive and just focus on getting the homework done right.  I prefer to know what the student was supposed to understand the first time and didn't as well as how it was presented.  I realize I could just wing it, but I prefer not to.  This is why I hate tutoring.

[EKS]

50 minutes ago, MamaSprout said:

Weirdly the comments are that DO harder than it needs to be. I just think it's conceptually solid.

This is what the tutor is saying?

[MamaSprout]

20 minutes ago, EKS said:

This is what the tutor is saying?

I'm just getting the face of doom because they've tutored DO Calc before and it went much like you said above, except they don't have the time to work through things or access to the videos.

They're doing okay right now in precalculus because of the book, and honestly Dd doesn't need much help. It's more that she really has a need to talk about math with someone and it weirds out people her own age.

Dd will randomly show up with AoPS/ eimacs and AMC stuff too. They have fun with it, but that's a lot to ask of any tutor who really didn't sign on for any of that.

Edited February 13, 2020 by MamaSprout

[EKS]

3 minutes ago, MamaSprout said:

I'm just getting the face of doom because they've tutored DO Calc before and it went much like you said above, except they don't have the time to work through things or access to the videos.

This is actually one of the shortcomings of the program.  I've occasionally thought to ask DO if it would be possible to get a filled in set of notes, but never have.  

[kiana]

On 2/13/2020 at 3:40 PM, MamaSprout said:

Weirdly the comments are that DO harder than it needs to be. I just think it's conceptually solid. There's a lot of cookbook calc around here.

 

A lot of times, "makes it harder than it needs to be" = "not cookbook", yeah. 

Is it possible to find a different tutor? 

[alewife]

On 2/13/2020 at 3:37 PM, MamaSprout said:

 

I really thought we would just go with DE at this point. Unfortunately, they use a Stewart Essentials book, and I've seen too many smart kids locally DE here and then find they just don't have enough foundation when they hit Calc 3 at another university that assumes they have learned more than just the "essentials".

Fwiw, all three of my kids used the Larson textbooks as their main text.  All three received a 5 on the AP exam, used that AP credit to place out at their respective colleges, and went on to earn A's in the next class in  their colleges' sequences.

Edited February 15, 2020 by alewife

[MamaSprout]

Just now, alewife said:

Fwiw, all three of my kids used the Larson textbooks as their main text.  All three received a 5 on the AP exam, used that AP credit to place out at their respective colleges, and went on to earn A's in the next class in  their colleges' sequences.

The college isn't using Larson. It's using the Stewart Essentials text. My dd just doesn't like Larson's explanations or the Chalkdust videos that seem to be everywhere in the distance courses.

[alewife]

1 minute ago, MamaSprout said:

The college isn't using Larson. It's using the Stewart Essentials text. My dd just doesn't like Larson's explanations or the Chalkdust videos that seem to be everywhere in the distance courses.

Yes, I just thought I would throw out there that the Larson textbook did prepare my kids since you are trying to decide on a textbook.  I don't know anything about Stewart's text to comment on that.  Did the kids that you know who struggled in the next class in the sequence get 5's on the AP exam?  Some colleges accept scores of 3's on the AP exam.  Imo, those kids would definitely struggle in the next class in the sequence.

[MamaSprout]

16 minutes ago, kiana said:

 

A lot of times, "makes it harder than it needs to be" = "not cookbook", yeah. 

Is it possible to find a different tutor? 

I'm kind of poking around that. So far I have some potential leads, but just for Calc AB. Since dd is still a freshman this year, I'd like to find something for BC, as well.

[MamaSprout]

2 minutes ago, alewife said:

Yes, I just thought I would throw out there that the Larson textbook did prepare my kids since you are trying to decide on a textbook.  I don't know anything about Stewart's text to comment on that.  Did the kids that you know who struggled in the next class in the sequence get 5's on the AP exam?  Some colleges accept scores of 3's on the AP exam.  Imo, those kids would definitely struggle in the next class in the sequence.

It was a DE course, so no AP. I think big Stewart is okay, but the Essentials text is pretty incomplete. It's pretty much written to get engineering students through the necessary calculus. I'm not even sure I'll have dd take the AP exams, which are not widely available around here. Most of the schools she is looking at allow testing out or taking a higher-level course to get credit for the lower-level one.

[MamaSprout]

I guess you could say we landed squarely in the "calculus trap". We got to calculus, and our local option is not appropriate for a younger student who will probably go beyond calculus.

We might end up with Larson, at least for Calc BC/ Calc 2. Dd prefers DO (which is just Calc 1/ AB) or Thomas, which would require finding teaching helps and a tutor willing to use it.

We moved to a state that has a uni that offers call-in and live chat tutoring for students, but I'm not sure if that's the same as talking about math with someone.

She'll also be doing imacs next year, so maybe cookbook calc would be okay.

Edited February 15, 2020 by MamaSprout

[EKS]

4 hours ago, square_25 said:

That's such an odd attitude. I think calculus is a) genuinely cool and aesthetically appealing and b) not going to be useful for most kids. If you're going to study it at all, you may as well learn the big, cool ideas, and not just memorize derivatives (which you probably won't ever need to use) without knowing what derivatives are... 

I totally agree.  To me calculus is like the special treat at the end of precalculus, just as algebra is the treat at the end of arithmetic.

Edited February 16, 2020 by EKS

[kiana]

On 2/15/2020 at 3:21 PM, square_25 said:

 

That's such an odd attitude. I think calculus is a) genuinely cool and aesthetically appealing and b) not going to be useful for most kids. If you're going to study it at all, you may as well learn the big, cool ideas, and not just memorize derivatives (which you probably won't ever need to use) without knowing what derivatives are... 

I agree. But I have so many students come in out of high school calc and apparently all they learned was how to take a derivative of a polynomial. Not that they know what they are ... if you ask them the slope of the tangent line at a point, they'll say "huh?" unless you say 'that means f'(a)'. But by golly they can apply the power rule. 

[prairiewindmomma]

Ds used Larson's Calculus of a Single Variable combined with the disks---generic chalkdust and liked it better than he's liked calculus as presented at his college, fwiw.  We didn't really look at other options, so I can't make comparisons.

[gstharr]

On 2/12/2020 at 3:42 AM, MamaSprout said:

I got a hold of a cheap copy of Thomas and it does look good. I wish I could find a tutor/ teacher and/or video instructor for it. Our current tutor doesn't really want to continue into Calculus, especially DO. ETA Dd doesn't like Larson's explanations especially well.

 My 9th  grader is doing college calc with Thinkwell. He has a weekly group tutor.  He print off any difficult problems for the tutor. Then the tutor uses a standard AP textbook.  The tutor does teach TW, or even review ti.   Just has him do every other problem in the AP text for an hour.  So our order is Thinkwell lessons, TW chapter tests, then corresponding  topics from the AP text. seems to be working very well.