Objectively, calculus IS hard. At my university it was, by a very wide margin, the most-failed first year class. That’s true at many campuses. Some people will breeze through it, but I’d say they represent a smaller portion of the total number of students taking it than you would find is the case for any other class.
Why? Well, calculus involves a few conceptual leaps up from just standard algebra and trigonometry while requiring that you have those skills down absolutely flat. Once you get your head bent around the concepts it starts to really come to you.
Sadly, it can depend on your teacher. I had a very good calculus instructor and the great majority of the class passed. Mrs. RickJay had a disinterested, incompetent calculus instructor, and three quarters of the class failed; she passed only by virtue of me having taken it many years before, so she had a tutor handy.
Statistics is another one that can throw students for a loop. the math isn’t that complicated; it’s the conceptual understanding that can frustrate some people.
Calculus isn’t all that bad. I am currently preparing for my AP Calculus AB exam. Calculus is quite different from other math, you need to know the previous math inorder to spolve the problems but it’s mainly about slopes and areas.
Some people think its hard (I don’t particularly) but if you are willing to work on it I think it’s doable
Calculus is the most beautiful thing invented by the mind of man. I am in awe of the fact that we can use it to describe the motion of a moon hurtling around a gas giant. I’m even more awed at the fact that you can use it to describe the motion of a roller coaster or a swinging chandelier or, hell, a block sliding down an inclined plane.
If you ever hope to do any kind of physics and really appreciate it, you’ll want to know calculus as though it were your milk tongue. But 95% of the population neither wants nor needs to appreciate physics, so you can take that for what it’s worth.
Calculus is not easy. Nothing of any real value is easy to learn. I did not learn to love math until college calculus–it was a struggle until then, and math continues to be a bit of a struggle to me, but a struggle with rich rewards, IMHO.
RickJay is absolutely right about the difficulty of the class being directly related to how good the instructor is. If explained well by a good instructor, the concepts themselves are not particularly difficult. It’s easy to get confused if you’re taught by somebody who doesn’t really understand it well themselves, or who just doesn’t know how to explain it properly.
Once you understand calculus, you’ll think it’s pretty cool.
I agree with Podkayne. Calculus is beautiful. I thought algebra felt practical and kinda neat, and I thought that geometry felt … well, ugly and convoluted. (Bad teacher that year.) But calculus always struck me as elegant.
If calculus was a woman, I’d totally do her, man.
It helped that I took calculus in a class of 13 (later only 8) with a wonderful teacher.
Calculus has never been a problem for me… and this is after going through both Linear Algebra and Differential Equations and Multivariable (Vector) Calc. classes… Now Pre-calc, with it’s trig functions and stuff, that was like hitting my head against a brick wall.
I concur that a good instructor is half of your grade. I got a ‘C’ in my quarter with a so-so teacher, but as a Math Major, I needed a more solid foundation for my degree, so I sought out the best prof on campus (by word of mouth) and I re-took the course. That was the best move I ever made in college. I got straight A’s in the rest of the calc series, and differential eq, and A’s & B’s in the rest of the electives.
I love how calculus explains how to arrive at these equations for a circle/sphere:
2*pi*r --> pi*r**2 --> 4/3*pi*r**3
circumfrence --> area --> volume
I shed a tear of joy and content when it all clicked into place.
Multi-Variable Statistics: The instructor plays an even more important role. We had this crappy prof who had to go a convention back east for a couple of weeks and this other prof came in to sub, and We Were Enlightened for those two weeks! Everything made sense to us and we aced our midterms. AND THEN SHE CAME BACK…and we all went back into our funk. DAMMIT! I’m still pissed off just thinking about that class!
I’m a Computer Science major, which means that I’ve taken Pre-Calc, Calc 1-3 (1 was basically derivatives and a few basic integrals, 2 was more complicated integrals, trig substitution, etc and 3 was mulitvariable with the LaGrange multipliers, local max/mins et al), Discrete Math and I’m now in Differential Equations (it’s in 8 weeks, half-time, eep!).
I had a wonderful professor for Calc 1 and 2. One of his observations was very true in my case: “For many people, calculus is not hard at all, but you’ll make so many mistakes because of algebra, not calculus.” I would’ve liked my Calc 3 more if I didn’t have a mean jerk who couldn’t teach (I half-jokingly tried to bribe my Calc 1-2 prof to teach 3, heh).
Honestly, I found discrete math much harder. The stuff (in my course at least) really wasn’t all that difficult, but it’s just so different than the math I was used to. I spent most of the semester listening to lectures thinking, “what???”. It was funny though; literally with 3 lectures to go, my brain went ding, and I was understanding everything. Eventually, if you try, your brain will most likely “get” it.
It’s a bit funny that I’m here in Differential Equations this summer, and it’s my first math math class (I had Physics 1 and 2 last year instead of straight math classes) in a year, and… call me a nerd, but I’m finding it almost soothing. I started out hating math, but I find myself enjoying it more as the classes progress (except for Calc 3, :: shudder :: ).
Plus, I’m one of only 3 girls in my Diff Eq class. In some ways it’s depressing, but in other ways it makes me more determined to do well.
Differential/Integral calculus was like falling off a log, it was so easy.
Variational calculus kicked my ass all hollow.
Like others have said, it’s a subjective thing. Your ability to learn and understand mathematics may be different from mine. I thought I was pretty good at it, but it turns out that I wasn’t.
The only way you are going to find out if you can do it is to try it.
If you find out that you can’t do it, drop the course. If you can do it, keep going until you hit something you can’t do. Then stop.
I had to take 2 years of Calculus in college, and I had already taken one year in High School. I didn’t like it, and I have never needed to use it since (I am a biologist). Algebra I use all the time in my job, but Calculus? Not once in 16 years.
I did really well in Algebra, Geometry and Trig in High School, and did OK in Calc, but I just didn’t like it. I got it, but I didn’t enjoy it, and college was no different. I got to a point in my life where I just couldn’t learn a subject if I didn’t enjoy it on some level. I found the later Math courses too dry and boring. I had no interest in learning the subject for its own sake, there didn’t seem to be any point…I wasn’t going to try to land the Space Shuttle, fercryingoutloud.
My cousin seemed to have the opposite experience. He hadn’t done well in Math in high school, but he got to college and just blossomed. He actually got better grades in the later classes like Linear Algebra and Differential Equations than he did in the earlier classes like Calc. I. He is now an electrical engineer. His mother and my mother both majored in math, so it should be in our blood, so to speak.
Calculus sin’t so bad, except that some of them integrals are downright evil.
I took a year of Calc in highschool, and then got AP credit for Calc I in college and took a semester of Calc II, then a semester of differential equations. They took calculus, and then told you that the rules you learned before don’t work for these integrals, because they are related in some weird way (like ydot + y = 2y + 3.) It seemed trivial and stupid at first, but now that I’ve had two more years of studying to be an engineer, it is apparant that differential equations actually DO have a place, and they represent real things, and can be used to model things that are actually harder if not done that way.
Learning calculus is like getting to Carnegie hall-- practice, practice, practice. You really do have to do all the homework and then some to get a feel for the subject. Plus, like the previous folks above said, make sure you get a GOOD professor. That’s pretty damn important.
In my first run-through as an undergrad back in the early '80s I took calculus and got my ass kicked. It rather dashed my hopes of becoming a science major, so I changed to something else and eventually dropped out of college.
Several years later, I decide to finish my degree and get into a returning adult program with a computer science minor. CS prof says “hey, take some calculus classes and you might be accepted into the MA program.” So I take calc I-IV, not only do well but fall absolutely in love with the subject. I’m now a math major.
I started out hating math, but I find myself enjoying it more as the classes progress (except for Calc 3, :: shudder :: ).
