relearn calculus so I intuitively understand it

It’s not my fault that they scheduled Mathematics for Science on Bar Trivia night. They forced me to choose. They’re so manipulative.

Well now I don’t have uni anymore, much less a science degree, so I’m gradually losing all that knowledge that I never learned in the first place.

I think I should start with maths and work my way up. Calculus is a good start – surely I haven’t forgotten anything before that… I hope. I would ask one of my friends for help, but the one I know to be mathy is quite insane, and despite also doing a science degree, he tried to convince me once that UV radiation is not electromagnetic radiation. So I think I’ll have to go it alone.

Anyway, I’m not sure how I will apply it in my new world of computer hardware sales, but I’m sure it’s good for my brain, just like Pilates would be good for my body in some vague unknown way.

Meh.

Calculus is something that I’d love to have a better connection with. I’d love to be able to develop some sort of intuitive ability with it, but to be honest, I don’t really have an applications for calc in my life. This is a step towards trying to understanding physics on a more intuitive level. I think I need to carve some space for this in my life before I can take it further.

this one is a shame only because there has been so much other crap going on in my life that i dont really have
a) a use for calculus at the moment
b) any justification for doing anything that goes toward finishing this goal.

sooooo with that said, this is also more of a longterm goal. i think i fall into the trap where i think i have to get all of thes edone in a timely manner, when in fact i dont.

excellent

The very “calculus” is very intimidating…but its definitely easier to understand and master than Geometry. Though i love geometry, only if i put my heart and mind into it… but i digress.

Calculus is fun!! really!! LOL

Yeah, check it out. I went and bought one of those books with calculus lessons at the end of every chapter and lots of examples. not a textbook, just a refresher. anyways, i got up to chapter 6 last fall. its tough to complete a goal like this during the summer, but through my studies last fall, I ended up finally getting the whole tangent/derivative/what it means mathematically as well as graphically angle.

I’m not dumb, far from it, I just think I had a horrible high school calc teacher, and when you learn something wrong the first time around, it takes some time to correct yourself.

Into Chapter 2 in my calculus text of choice. I’m working all the solved problems, and re-working them until I get them right. It’s time-consuming, but this is the mathematics-learning method with which I succeeded before.

Calculus makes me shake my head. It makes me realize again how weird and unphysical the real numbers are, never mind the complex and hyperreal numbers. I’ll study for an hour or two then find I am daydreaming about Zeno’s paradox. The real numbers seem like a convenient fiction, yet they are somehow (like pi and e) bound up in the very structure of space and number. [shakes head vigorously]

Wish me luck! Or rather, wish me patience.

My advisor says: 12 credits left for graduation, and half of them must be upper-division math or statistics classes. If I haven’t re-learned calculus tidily by then, I will get my academic behind kicked right around the block and back again the other way. I’ve already started to run into trouble over it.

Can’t believe I aced multivariable calculus ten years ago! I was a younger and smarter woman then. Now that I think of it, that’s also about when I decided to marry my sweetie. Smartest year of my life.

I need a context for all the Maths I did at school, some 25 years ago…

I’m currently reading “Journey through Genius” which is a great historical and mathematical grounding.

Amazon: Journey through Genius