How to teach myself Calculus...?

Question

I want to teach myself Calculus so I can understand Physics much better but this course is not offered at my school.

How can I teach myself Calculus?

Thank you

Answer 1

Good luck - very few people can teach themselves calculus entirely on their own.



If you want to try, I would recommend getting your hands on a calculus textbook and reading it. Start at chapter one, and make sure you read the proofs and examples very thoroughly. Reading proofs is not easy; you have to go through them one line at a time, and resist the temptation to move on to the next line until you know *exactly* what the author is doing - and why.



Once you completely understand the proofs & examples, start doing the problems. That's the best way to ensure that you actually *do* understand what's going on, instead of just *thinking* you understand it. You don't want to settle for a level of understanding where you can just follow along when someone else is doing a problem; you want to be able to solve the problems on your own, without any help.



BTW, for me at least, this is the only way to learn math. I learn much better from the book than from any professor or tutor. The professors and tutors are useful if you get stuck, but it's best to get yourself unstuck without help if you can.



Again, good luck. Learning calculus on your own is a heckuva project.



Hope that helps!

Answer 2

It's true to an extent that calculus is one of the hardest areas of mathematics. I'm not sure why. I am quite good at areas of mathematics that a lot of my peers are not so good at, vector spaces and programming come to mind, but I seem to completely suck at calculus. I think its the blend of creativity/intuition needed to see through a problem combined with the many different rules there are for different types of integration and differentiation. It doesn't sit well with people [more like me] who prefer to remember the least possible amount of facts and then derive everything and sort of 'ad-lib'. This is impossible with calculus. However the people who are better at memorising facts, rules and tools don't find it much easier because you need a good eye for intuition and at sometimes, a bit of genius, to get things right. Calculus starts very easy, but gets hard quite quickly. In my experience the hardest thing is integration, specifically integration by substitution where you have to make up your own substitution. Most of the other rules are simpler. Higher order differential equations [something you wont have to deal with for a while yet] are also tricky. However, once you have assimilated the different calculus techniques it becomes fairly straight forward, and there is no subsitution for practise. Also, if you get a good handle on 2-D calculus, you will find higher dimensional calculus much easier. I actually found my course on partial calculus [meaning calculus on higher dimensions] easier because the focus was on dealing with the added dimension and not the actual process of integration/differentiation itself. In short, if you get a good book and perhaps a little tutor time, you should be able to handle it. Trigonometry will be a life-saver for some of the problems you will face, believe me, it crops up in places you sometimes don't expect. I say go for it, you sound like a bright kid, and to be honest I found the beginnings of calculus extremely easy. It seems like the stigma attatched makes it easier because the introductory stages are made very easy.

Answer 3

"calculus" means "computation". I suppose you mean differential calculus and maybe integral calculus too?

It is likely that trigonometry is much more difficult than differential calculus, If you've mastered algebra, geometry and trig, then dc is easy. Get a book on diff calc that has lots of answers to the problems. Make sure book has lots of story problems.

dc is about: 1. memoriizing about 2 dozen prototypical formulas and 2 learning to apply all the math you previously were taught to maximum, minimum and rate problems.

integral calculus is a bit harder, but once you've mastered limits and rates in d.c., it should come with a little practice.There's all sorts of book available with practice problems.

Answer 4

Start googling, try derivatives, integrals, rate of change, trig identities, inverse functions, even and odd functions, area under the curve, mean value theorem, intermediate value theorem. that should be enough to get you started, also check out this website: wolframalpha.com. hope this helps...

Answer 5

read books dude. it helps a lot.