Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Monday, April 18, 2022

DVD/Study Aid Review: Calculus 1: Extra Practice With Derivatives

 


The extra practice with derivatives course is a set that is really meant to flesh out the calculus 1 curriculum. It does provide exactly what it says, more examples of the various techniques of differentiation like the chain rule and the product rule, but it also expands on what was in Jason's first calculus set with lessons on implicit differentiation, derivatives of natural logs, natural exponents, general logs, general exponents, and related rates. Related rates are, along with optimization problems, the bane of most student's first semester of calculus. Related rates problems are not hard once you learn to set them up, but learning how to do so can be a big pain.

Like in his other tutorials, Jason solves the problems step-by-step, not only explaining what he is doing as he goes but also recapping the problems after he has worked them out. His presentation is not flashy. It is just him in front of a whiteboard working through examples. He does a great job of breaking down the problems and explaining the process to solve them. Of course, since it is a recorded tutorial, you cannot interact with him and ask questions, so you do have to be aware of what your style of learning is, and if this would fit. But, if you are a visual learner and can learn on your own to some extent, this is a great resource and will help anyone trying to learn calculus, whether you are taking a class, are going to be taking a class, or just trying to learn it on your own.

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