(OT) Calculus Help for Morons

[kingpaul]

Okay, enough metaphysics for one day...

Well, it didn't help that most of my college math profs (Cacl I and above) were Catholic priests (funny how that happens going to a Catholic college) and that my philosophy profs (also priests) were math nerds as well...I minored in philsophy and math.

 

[kingpaul]

Dink... I'm going to be a history major. I want to teach high school history. If I take calculus in college... well damn taht's just masochistic of me!

Its not masochistic...its called getting a well-rounded education. I minored in history with my BSEE.

 

[kingpaul]

Just remember: regardless of what you get on the AP test, take Calculus in college. This goes especially if you're looking at a technical degree. You're not suffering through a year's worth of classes you could avoid (thereby speeding up graduation by that much--logical fallacy, as graduation is never sped up, only delayed), you're padding your GPA with a year's worth of A's.

That's only if you attempt to do some studying. Don't do what I did. My freshman year at college was almost a complete rehash of senior year in high school. I pretty much goofed off, did no homework and no studying and got a 3.0. However, because I had fallen out of the studying habit, I paid for it my sophomore year. I had solid junior, senior and senior+ (5 years baby!) years, but only totalled 2.94...this tells you how sophomore year hit me.

 

[kingpaul]

How'd you get all the nifty math symbols onto the boards? And... these standard integrals... I'm a teensy bit puzzled how they work...?

I wondered that as well. If you quote the message, you'll see how he did it. As for the standard integrals, my Calc book has examples using a, b, m and n as variables, and shows how, given one of many possible integrals, to calculate the integral.

 

[Saba Taru]

There's an easier way

Just do what I did. Marry a guy with a math degree. It solved all my math problems.

 

[kingpaul]

Re: There's an easier way

Just do what I did. Marry a guy with a math degree. It solved all my math problems.

Well, that's what my wife did.

 

[orbitalfreak]

How'd you get all the nifty math symbols onto the boards? And... these standard integrals... I'm a teensy bit puzzled how they work...?

Nifty math symbols:
>Link< to the site I use. Just enclose any of the codes on that page within an ampersand and a semicolon ( & ; ). For instance, &int: produces ∫, while &radic: gives you √. For the superscript and subscript numbers, I used {sup}whatever{/sup} and {sub}something{/sub} for super- and sub-script, respectively. Replace the : with ; and the < and > with { and } to make the codes work.

Standard Integrals:
There are lots of integrals where people have already done the hard work for you. These are the types of integrals that you will come across when doing complicated problems; you may have several integrals in a single application. Instead of wasting your time <i>doing</i> the integral, you just look it up in a book to get your answer. That way, you can focus on the difficult aspects of the problem, without worrying about the comparatively "trivial" aspect of computing an integral.

Breaking out my copy of Thomas/Finney's "Calculus and Analytic Geometry," they have 141 integrals listed in their "A Brief Table of Integrals" printed on the inside front and back covers.