Calculus 3, or multivariable calculus, is almost universally considered to be the hardest class in the calculus sequence, and even people who do well in the first year of calculus often struggle with it. And, it is even worse if you are stuck with a teacher who is not great and/or cannot make heads or tails of the book. I found Jason's material when I was returning to school to get an Electrical Engineering degree for which you have to take all of the calculus classes. I used this a lot to supplement my book (which was useless) and my class lectures (which were sometimes good, sometimes bad).
Jason has two volumes of his calc 3 tutor. This volume covers about the first quarter to the first third of the material you will see in class. It starts out with vectors, then gets into partial derivatives and multivariable functions, directional derivatives, gradients, and then double integrals. In my class, the first exam covered everything on this volume through the gradient material. It should always be noted that this is a supplement to, not a replacement for, going to class. Calc 3 has a lot of material and even with two volumes, Jason does not cover it all. While he does hit the "main" topics that you see in class, there is a lot to choose from and you can only figure out what your professor will emphasize if you go to class. While Jason tends to pick example problems that range from easy to moderately difficult, you may get stuck with a teacher like mine who often picked the most difficult problems for homework and exam problems. So, while this gave me a good foundation for the material, there is no way I could have just relied on this and done well in my class. You also need to have a handle on what your learning style is. This pretty much mimics a college lecture, but with less emphasis on the explanatory material and more emphasis on working example problems. That is definitely not going to fit everyone's learning style. But, if you are visual learner and like seeing problems worked out, this will definitely help you.
Jason has two volumes of his calc 3 tutor. This volume covers about the first quarter to the first third of the material you will see in class. It starts out with vectors, then gets into partial derivatives and multivariable functions, directional derivatives, gradients, and then double integrals. In my class, the first exam covered everything on this volume through the gradient material. It should always be noted that this is a supplement to, not a replacement for, going to class. Calc 3 has a lot of material and even with two volumes, Jason does not cover it all. While he does hit the "main" topics that you see in class, there is a lot to choose from and you can only figure out what your professor will emphasize if you go to class. While Jason tends to pick example problems that range from easy to moderately difficult, you may get stuck with a teacher like mine who often picked the most difficult problems for homework and exam problems. So, while this gave me a good foundation for the material, there is no way I could have just relied on this and done well in my class. You also need to have a handle on what your learning style is. This pretty much mimics a college lecture, but with less emphasis on the explanatory material and more emphasis on working example problems. That is definitely not going to fit everyone's learning style. But, if you are visual learner and like seeing problems worked out, this will definitely help you.
No comments:
Post a Comment