I violently hate calculus and physics

The BBQ Pit
1

Violent hate. My educational background isn’t too bad, i’ve had 3 college math courses (algebra, pre-calculus and trigonometry). None of them were too bad and my grades were A, A, A-. I’ve also had 8 science course in college and I’m currently enrolled in 2 science courses (300 & 400 level) and calculus I and an A/H course. And fuck calculus to death. Calculus is worse than the 300 & 400 level science courses combined. I would probably opt to take another 300 and another 400 level science course over Calculus 211. I hate it so violently.

I partially hate it because of all the work, spending 8-9 hours a week on homework isn’t unnatural. But I have done that for some science courses too and it didn’t bother me. I took a chemistry course in summer so it was accelerated, I put in 8-9 hours a week on average in there too, I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either. But most of my science courses haven’t required tons of effort. I assume the reason it didn’t bother me in the science courses is because I didn’t spend 8-9 hours every week and because the material was tangible. Sciences like anatomy & physiology, chemistry, biology, microbiology, virology, etc. are all tangible subjects. Its not esoteric stuff you’ve never seen or heard of before layered on more esoteric stuff you’ve never seen or heard of before being spouted by someone in a cheap suit with poor empathy skills exclaiming ‘this is why we have engineering’. Sciences are tangible subjects. Maybe thats why I did better in the earlier math courses, they were not as esoteric. And that the class wasn’t designed for people who had experience.

I assume physics will be the same. I don’t know if its the instructor, the fact that i’m not good at calculus, or that i’m not trying hard enough. I assume a mixture. I have never taken a calculus class before and 80% of my class is 19 year olds who are fresh out of high school who have taken calculus in high school and maybe finite math in college. I have not done either, I just did trigonometry instead of finite. So I am at a disadvantage. I talked to a friend from college who took physics (calculus based physics, not algebra based) about which is harder, calculus or physics and he said calculus because at least physics was rational. So maybe physics won’t be as bad since its rational, tangible stuff. Maybe.

I don’t care about grades in these classes to be honest. There is literally no way a low grade in calculus or physics will ever matter in my life. It will lower my GPA, but I can just take mickey mouse courses to compensate for that, all I care about is a C- so I don’t have to take the courses again. Unless I intend to go to graduate school for math and physics (which require a B or higher to get in) I will never need a good grade in these courses, and I would only go to college for calculus and physics if a prison gang threatened to rape my father or something.

IUE has lower academic standards than IUB. I think that I will try to do Physics I and Calculus II in spring here at IUB. I figure I should go full ass into it just to get it over with. Then in summer I will try to do either linear algebra or Calculus III (I need either calculus III, linear algebra or intro to differential equations for my 3rd math class) and physics II at IUE if they are offered. If so then I will never have to take another calculus or physics course again. IUE is different than IUB, IUE is filled with people with GEDs, people who work 40 hours a week, single parents, blue collar people trying to work their way up in the world, etc. IUB is filled with 19 year old pre-med students with 3.8 GPAs from high school. So naturally the same classes are harder. So I figure take as much calculus and physics at IUE as I can to get it over with.

After it is all done with I will go on half.com and buy some 10 year old hardcover editions of calculus and physics textbooks, set them up in the yard and shotgun them to shreds. Then I will dump them in a grave, shit in the grave and put up a tombstone that says ‘never again’.

I think what bothers me the most is the esoteric-ness of it. Its not like a science course where you can see the info, or visualize it. Maybe i’m a visual learner and thats why I hate this course so much (since I can’t really visualize it), I don’t know but it does make sense. I have learned about myself that I learn info the best by seeing examples and diagrams, and calculus is esoteric where these things don’t exist as far as I can tell, at least not in this class. Maybe its the types of homework assignments that just ‘assume’ you understand the principles before you do. So maybe i’m a fish out of water in calculus and physics because the way I learn best doesn’t work on this subject. Take my earlier math classes, algebra pre-calc and trig. I was one of the top 3 students in all of these classes. In calculus I am near the 50% mark, 50% do better and 50% do worse. I personally don’t care about that I just feel afraid know that. I fear everyone else around me ‘gets it’ and I do not. Its probably not true though.

Give me a C-, thats all I care about. I got an 83% on the first test, which is good enough to pass. Lets hope I can keep the momentum going so I can get out of this place.

2

Don’t worry. Differential Equations is much more fun. :cool:

3

LMAO. I have a choice for my 3rd math class. I can pick differential equations, Calc III or linear algebra. If I can take them at IUE I will, they are probably taught at the high school level over there.

4

WAAAAAAAA!!!

I personally think it was one of the only things in college that I enjoyed.

5

Ya know, this is true. I hated algebra and math in general until I got into calculas. Nowing why pi r ^2 is the area of a circle is just too cool.

taking def eqs was finally understanding the power of math. Amazing stuff.

6

Thats good. I think if I had a better textbook, or knew of a website with better examples the subject would make more sense and not bother me as much.

Can anyone think of a book or website that explains calculus to the layman? I don’t think I understand the material well enough just from lectures and the book doesn’t help much/any.

Is this book any good?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764524984/104-6692826-7756714?v=glance

7

Damn no book carrying public library. This book looks like it might help too

8

Does anyone have any suggestions? Both books can be had for about $10 each. Should I buy one, buy both or go to the library and use the ILL program to look at them? Neither the college library or municipal library carries either book.

9

Alright, for those following, I couldn’t find the two books I wanted (calculus for dummies and the complete idiots guide to calculus) but I found some others at the municipal library that may help me. There are also books on physics but I don’t need those right now.

'vish me luck, tomorrow i’m going to the library to get these books

Calculus the easy way
Calculus made easy
Conquering calculus : the easy road to understanding mathematics
How to enjoy calculus
The power of calculus
I may get ‘calculus for dummies’ and ‘the complete idiots guide to calculus’ via the ILL program. If they are good I will buy them on ebay.

10

Any decent intro to calc or first-year calc class damned well should give you plenty to visualize. Hell, every math course should give you a couple new images to chew over. For example, here’s how you can visualize the two most important concepts in any basic course on the topic:
[ul]
[li]Differentiation is finding the equation of a line that gives you the slope of another function at that point. That is, it is a graph of the acceleration of the function, just like if it was a car on the highway or a spacecraft in orbit.[/li][li]Integration is finding the area of a specific region beneath a curve. This is, despite all appearances, the inverse of differentiation (to a certain extent). That fact, by the way, is the short form of the fundamental theorem of the calculus.[/li][/ul]
Those aren’t the best examples, but they’re the ones I was taught. My point is that a visual person shouldn’t ever be put off by mathematics, unless his teacher is a dumbass.

As for books, I would recommend two:
[ul]
[li]Calculus Made Easy, by Silvanus P. Thompson and Martin Gardner. This is an intensely practical first-year-level book on how to work the equations. It’s good to have at your elbow when doing homework.[/li][li]A Tour of the Calculus, by David Berlinski. This is a book you may not think possible: An interesting, readable study of the whys of calculus, which takes you up to the fundamental theorem of the calculus. Again, this is first-year stuff, but that’s where you’re at, unless I’ve misread your OP.[/li][/ul]Both books occupy honored positons on my own shelf, and I think you would do well to buy them and read them.

11

Calculus is largely dependent upon the instructor, IMHO, to make it workable for the students. I’ve seen classes where the students all excelled at it due to the teacher, and ones where they’ve mostly tanked because of the teacher. Physics IMHO is another class in this category - the right physics teacher makes it fun and even exciting to know why everything around you works. The wrong physics teacher makes you feel frustrated and helpless and even scared - scared that you might be “too dumb” to learn advanced physics.

Even if I’m 100% correct, however, that doesn’t mean there’s much you can do once the course starts. I guess the only thing that can help you is to recognize that due to this potential dependence, much of your frustration and woe is possibly not due to a failing on your part.

12

I’d throw in a “fuck chemistry” but there ain’t no reason for it to be gettin’ lucky. I hate it so much that there aren’t even words to describe it. I graduate in 72 days and then I will never have to think about chemistry again. I’m sick, sick, sick of it.

Anyway, I wanted to post to let you know that I used either Calculus the Easy Way or Calculus Made Easy (can’t remember now) and it was very helpful. Also, I think an 83% on the first exam is very good and you should be proud. :slight_smile:

[sub]and fuck chemistry[/sub]

13

Una has a very good point–your teacher matters a lot if you fall in the middle, oh, 90%* of calculus students. The rest either are or aren’t going to get it, teacher be damned.

If you’ve made it through a 400-level science class (biochem, isn’t it?), you’re very likely not in that bottom 5%.

*I made this number up.

14

I’m still at the “fuck algebra” level.

15

I presume you are talking about this book.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387905189/qid=1097209251/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_2_1/103-5593776-0761413

16

I love chemistry. I find it funny because my younger brother hates chemistry and loves math/physics and I love chemistry and hate math/physics. He’ll probably be entering grad school for a Ph.D. in math at about the time i’m taking a shit on a bunch of old textbooks and burying them in the yard.

Ultrafilter - my 400 level course is Inorganic Chemistry. The instructor is a really good guy and the class is not too bad. I’m not worried about biochem (483) because I hear its a total joke.

What chemistry class are you in right now Mercury? Is it organic or intro? most science majors require organic I and most non-science majors only require intro to chemistry.

I agree about the teacher though. My teacher is bad but hes not horrible. I just think that because he has had a math doctorate for 32 years and obviously doesn’t have great communication abilities with people new to advanced math that the shit he teaches goes over our heads. Nobody seems to know what hes talking about because he explains it like one competent mathematician would explain it to another if they were just shooting the shit. So I need a book to help me compensate on this subject.

17

I must tell you my story:

In my freshman year of college, I discovered that partying ALL the time was quite fun.

This, to make a long story short, resulted in me realizing the night before my calculus final that even should I somehow pull an A+ on the final, I would still barely pass the class (the best grade I could hope for was a D, as I had not done well on the mid-term at all). And there was NO way I was going to get an A+; I hadn’t even opened the book since the first week of class, and although I did attend the class regularly, I learned nothing (8AM class, I was usually either still a little drunk or badly hung over, and our instructor was an Iranian guy with an accent so bad that I literally could not understand what he was saying).

I crammed all night in a low-grade panic, and went the next morning to take the test.

The first question was worth 60% of the grade. It involved a conical reservoir filled with water. The bottom was cut out of the cone and the water was flowing out, we were given the radius, the depth, etc., and were to calculate the rate at which the water was flowing out of the bottom, the rate at which the rate of water flow was changing, and a couple of other things.

Wonder of wonders, I knew the equation that I needed to start working the problem! After writing it down, however, I realized that I had absolutely no idea what to do with the equation… I pondered it for several minutes, and came up with nothing.

Fine, skip that one, answer the rest of the questions first, and come back later… good plan! I went to the next question, and the next, and the next. I couldn’t even start to answer ANY of them. 15 minutes into a 2 hour final exam, and I was finished.

I toyed briefly with the idea of just getting up and turning in the test, but didn’t want the attention of being first out (especially that early!).

I sat there and toyed with my pencil and calculator for a few minutes, and then turned to the last page of the test (which had quite a lot of empty space on it). I wrote a story there for my professor:

When I was a little boy, I wrote, *My father once bought me an ice cream cone (a conical reservoir). After a while in the summer heat, the ice cream began to melt, and I, foolish child that I was, bit the bottom out of the ice cream cone. This caused the ice cream to flow out at a steadily decreasing rate, all over the seat of my father’s pickup truck. My father, seeing the mess I had made, struck me ferociously about the head and shoulders and berated me for being a stupid child.

That early experience is still with me this day; I am psychologically scarred, and cannot answer the first question on this test. Also, I am changing my major, and I promise that I will never darken the door of your classroom again. Sorry.*

I then got up, turned in the test, and walked out.

A few days later the grades were posted; I got a completely unearned D. :cool:

Lessons learned:

  1. you cannot learn a whole semester of calculus in one night (well, maybe YOU can! I can’t.)
  2. when totally screwed and you have no options, bullshit. You never know when it’ll work!
  3. study!
    True story.

(I did sober up a bit after that semester and managed to graduate with decent grades, even making the Dean’s list my final semester.)

18

What is a derivative then? What is a tangent line?

19

Why not try my website? I have a calculus primer that is really concise.
http://www.1728.com/calcprim.htm
One of the things I hated about calculus (and what I hate about Microsoft computer “help” screens) is the language is bloated, convoluted and worded in very arcane ways. I could go on but visit the site and see if it makes more sense to you than what has been presented to you in class.
Gee, it seems I am quite conceited to think I have found THE way to explain calculus. No, I just like to speak plain English.
Oh, and the site is free.

20

You should take all three! Or at least take Diffy Q and Linear Algebra. They Rock!

I’m a freak though; I’ve been thinking of going for a Masters in applied math (to go with my BS in Physics and MS in EE).