# Earn a certificate from MIT - for free **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 13, 2012, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713 "2012-02-13T15:46:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/21 "2012-02-14T09:54:51Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Note that the recommended (but not required) paper textbook was written by Anant Agarwal, the professor for the course. So if this is a popular offering and a fraction of those participating buy the book, he stands to make some money. That’s academia for you! For my sins I have a computer science degree from the [other](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/)Cambridge, so like Voyager I have done a very similar course, although it was all digital circuits iirc; I don’t expect to have any particular trouble with the course material, although I \*\*have \*\*forgotten pretty much everything I learned back then. Those of you worrying about calculus, from my understanding of the course material it’s very simple stuff, the kind of thing that in the UK you would learn at our equivilant of high school (I appreciate standards are lower in the US but not by **that** much) - and you have three weeks - so goooooo on, brush up on yer one variable basic integration and differentiation and first order linear differential equations and then let us know you’ve signed up in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/22 "2012-02-14T14:02:10Z")
I honestly don’t recall a lot about even basic integration and differentiation. I haven’t used them in decades (not since college). I don’t think I ever studied first order linear differential equations, but maybe I just don’t remember. Know of any good online sources to brush up on or learn this stuff? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/23 "2012-02-14T14:18:59Z")
MIT offers tons of free math courses also, you just don’t get a certificate for finishing them and there isn’t any feedback on your work (I gathered that this new thing will have a way to “submit” assignments and have them automatically graded?) There’s actually a list of “prereq” courses for this one that you can take for free. I’ve been considering doing some of the math or physics ones to see if I enjoy them more now that I’m a grownup. ---
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/24 "2012-02-14T14:41:58Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > I honestly don’t recall a lot about even basic integration and differentiation. I haven’t used them in decades (not since college). I don’t think I ever studied first order linear differential equations, but maybe I just don’t remember. > > Know of any good online sources to brush up on or learn this stuff? I don’t, sorry. What I would say is that the stuff suits itself very well to doint it by rote, you won’t really need any insights if it’s targetted how I expect it to be (so not having to recognise that X can be rewritten as Y^Z or whatever) - so you should be able to get along with just a big bunch o printed out examples - like what I just found in a quick google at [http://www.ecalc.com/math-help/worksheet/calculus-integrals/](http://www.ecalc.com/math-help/worksheet/calculus-integrals/) I have been known to be wrong though! ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/25 "2012-02-14T15:06:51Z")
Correct me if I’m remembering wrong. If I recall correctly, a lot of integration was done by using charts of known integrals or knowing the most common by memory. Differentiation was done just by understanding the concepts and knowing some rules. Am I remembering correctly? ---
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/26 "2012-02-14T17:27:46Z")
differentiation and integration are the same thing, just inverted. You are right in the sense that integration at that level is basically done by getting the expression into a form you recognise and know how to integrate, while you don’t have to bother doing that with differentiation, but yeah you just have to know the rules in either case. I don’t know what you mean by charts.\* Also, you can’t integrate everything, definitely anyway. Again, that shouldn’t be a problem here. \*so for example integrate 490x + 20x^2 with respect to x, you know integral of yf(x) is y’f(x), you know integral of x^n is (x^n+1)/n+1 so that’s 490 \* x^2 / 2 + 20 \* x ^ 3 / 3 = 245x^2 + 20/3x^3 + C … see, piece of piss 🙂 - and basically you’re not going to have to apply anything that much more complicated than that, probably integration by parts will be about as hard as it goes ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/27 "2012-02-14T17:48:21Z")
By “charts” I meant the common forms with solutions that were shown at the back of the textbook. “Chart” probably isn’t the correct word. Yes, I know that they are the inverse of each other. Basically, you can differentiate by following the rules. Going the other way isn’t that simple and you have to figure out what known form you’re looking at. I’m pretty sure that there are symbolic calculators these days that can do some of the work for you. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/28 "2012-02-14T21:18:50Z")
Once you’ve got the thing to be computed, [Wolfram Alpha](http://www.wolframalpha.com/) can do it for you. The calculations aren’t the hard part here. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/29 "2012-02-14T22:27:25Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Basically, you can differentiate by following the rules. Going the other way isn’t that simple and you have to figure out what known form you’re looking at. Yeah, basically. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/30 "2012-02-14T23:52:02Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > … > Basically, you can differentiate by following the rules. Going the other way isn’t that simple and you have to figure out what known form you’re looking at. > > … I agree. Differentiation/Taking the Derivative is mostly a matter of a few simple rules (e.g. exponent rule, quotient rule). Integration has a smorgasbord of techniques such as integration by parts and integration by partial fractions to the extent where you really need to start looking for patterns and trying to make your equation look like the input to one of the proven integration techniques. If you want to go the other way and take the derivative, it’s pretty much chug and go as long as the function is actually differentiable (i.e. unless it is a “differentially challenged” function). ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/31 "2012-02-15T01:56:59Z")
Good to know I remembered it correctly. ---
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/32 "2012-02-24T23:34:16Z")
Wow - I hadn’t quite realised [just how poor](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=643185) calculus teaching in US schools was. (This may be a poor excuse, but goddamit this thread needs bumping, every doper needs a qualification from MIT!) ---
**Author:** ![dzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@dzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzero)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/33 "2012-02-25T01:43:33Z")
Looks interesting - registered. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/6/e19adc/32.png) [@6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/34 "2012-02-25T13:25:25Z")
Thanks **spankthecrumpet** and **ultrafilter** - Anatomy at Stanford. I kin bild me sumthin! ---
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/35 "2012-02-29T22:05:06Z")
Five days to go! ---
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2012, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/36 "2012-03-04T13:17:26Z")
Less than twelve hours to go! ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2012, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/37 "2012-03-04T22:50:14Z")
Looks like an awesome idea, though like some others here, I don’t have the background for this particular offering. I’ll certainly be checking back from time to time, though. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2012, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/38 "2012-03-04T22:56:44Z")
I have most of the background (though no differential equations). I wish I could take it, but I’m just too swamped this semester (three separate research projects on top of my classes) to really dedicate the time to this course. ---
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2012, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/39 "2012-03-04T23:44:54Z")
15 minutes! Although I’m going to bed now. Be doing something in the morrow though ---
**Author:** ![spankthecrumpet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@spankthecrumpet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankthecrumpet)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713/40 "2012-03-05T15:17:32Z")
And… we’re ready for business! There’s already 131 questions been asked by students! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earn-a-certificate-from-mit-for-free/612713.md?page=1)