Book/Study Aid Review: How to Ace Calculus: The Streetwise Guide

 

This is a book that I used mostly to help teach myself calculus before I had to take the class. The first handful of chapters (about the first 30 pages or so) deal with things like choosing the right teacher, study tips, exam taking, etc. Then, it gets into the meat of the material that you will learn in class. It covers all of the major topics from the first semester of calculus and most of the material in the second semester. Of course, that depends on how your school structures the calculus curriculum, but if it is a standard split where the first semester deals with derivatives and their application, and then introduces integrals, and the second semester focuses on all of the various integration techniques and their applications, then this will get you through that. Some second-semester calc classes also cover an introduction to differential equations, and if your school does that, this book will not cover that material.

The book is not what I would call a problems repository. It is more like the explanatory material that comes before the problem sets in the textbooks and provides some examples. The explanation of the theory and how to work problems are better than you would get in a lot of textbooks, but if you would need to get something like one of Schaum's guides if you want something that just has a ton of practice problems. One of the very helpful things the author does is give tips for things to look out for when working with different problem types and point out common mistakes that people make. If you can internalize those concepts quickly and do a lot of practice problems you will learn the material and avoid unnecessary mistakes. So, if you can learn from a book, which is definitely hard for some people, this one is a good resource to help you learn the material. I would read this in conjunction with the textbook to help make sense of what the textbook is trying to explain.