For my sins I have a computer science degree from the otherCambridge, 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.
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?
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.
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/
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
- 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