I’ve decided that one of the things I should know is calculus. I found this course on sale and thought it sounded interesting, but I have reservations about how useful it may be.
My knowledge doesn’t need to be anything particularly complex, just enough to get familiar with a few basic equations and learn how changing the variables affects the answer (which, of course, is the point of calculus, but you get me). Nothing terribly complex, just some basic stuff and the ability to pick up some other standard sort of equations.
I’d use this as a starting point (getting an actual textbook and doing the exercises myself), but would rather avoid taking a night school class if at all possible.
Looks alright. But why not just pick up a book at the library and start learning from that? It’d be cheaper. I think it’s great that you want to learn calculus on your own.
The course looks allright, and it is true that there are simple ideas at the root of calculus. Not sure if it wouldn’t be better to look through available books on the subject first before parting with money on a possibly good course. Calculus is about how things change with respect to other related things, like distance w.r.t. time for a moving object. To my mind it is more closely related to the real world than arithmatic so is a good thing to learn about and understand. But to get far into calculus you will eventually needing to know plenty of fairly difficult math. Maybe try the most readable book you can find, and ‘dare I say it’ you can allways send questions to the dopers if some ideas aren’t clear.
No matter what course or book you choose, the most important thing is to do lots of problems. I’d recommend getting something like Schaum’s outline of calculus ($12 at Amazon) and doing all the problems. Post here if there’s a concept you really don’t get.
