Does anyone think this class is extremely hard? Especially finding integrals and finding sums of series and testing for convergence????? I'm so scared my final is this week and I don't know what i'm doing! How did you guys manage to get through without killing yourself? any tips for doing well?
Even though this a way old thread I'm sure ppl Google & come across it so here is my current 2 cents after just getting an A in Calc 2 with the following test scores:
82, 103,99,91
You can see there was a steep learning curve from test 1 to test 2. Test 1 was voluminous in its need for review from trig, pre-Calc & Calc. I had not taken Calc 1 for 9 months b/c I could not get into a successive class. I took Discrete in between but that's a whole different ball game(except for series, which came back to help me greatly!)So the amount of review I needed was tidal. Overwhelming. I could not answer ONE question on the day 1 "check your skills" assessment my prof gave out in class. I was scared! I could have studied more, or better, for that first test. But the first two months my mom was dying, then halfway through she died, then several weeks of funeral planning & family, so this load was upon me as well.
Ok so I did buckle down to a whopping 5-8 hours a week of Calc. (Sarcasm, guys, that's really nothing for a STEM class)
The integrals were hard! Holy cow were they tough at first! I did every problem I could get my hands on for test 2. She assigned about 20 problems in 7.5 Stratagies- I did all 81. Cool, so then I got 103 on test 2.
Sequences and series came next & all I can say is practice, practice,practice, and, oh, yeah, PRACTICE!
And then:
PRACTICE!!!
Do you get my point?
I will admit I have tremendous natural aptitude for series, testing convergence, etc, but I still practiced. She gave us a 40 page review. Yes, 40 pages! I did not do them all but I READ AND STUDIED them all. This is some good "cheat" advice about sequences and series. You can actually read them like a history book and learn them. They are mostly just algebra and very basic Calc if any Calc at all!!!! (Think about it before you protest, they ARE really easy once you know which test to apply) Try it! Definitely practice but then test your own ability (at home, guys, don't wait for the test to find out if you can do this successfully) to simply read the solutions and learn them. The only reason I lost one point on series test 3 was I jumped my comparison too fast. In my head I knew why the equality was valid, but I didn't show the intermediate breakdown. I lost more points on test 4 only because I totally forgot to study binomial series. We were behind and took that test one week before finals and it got lost in the jumble. But the rest of my test, power series, etc was perfection, using the same methods of practice some and read the rest.
So that's my advice for Calc 2. It starts out with overwhelming amounts of material but it's do-able. Really. Because you've actually had all that stuff before. It's just gotten a bit dusty or cobwebby sitting in your brain. Dust it off & you'll see it's still shiny underneath. And for all the new stuff, just practice problems, use Symbolab, Slader, Mathway to see solutions to things you don't remember. Try to avoid the standard solutions manual - it's not much help & might make things worse for you.