Calculus crunch time..

[HristosKaran]

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I was wondering if any of you guys had a remedy for crunching pre-calc and calc into a short period of time?? I took a practice test today and I scored well on all sections, except for the calculus portion...I have kaplan and cliff, but neither seem detailed enough for what I expect to see on test day. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[leolanoles]

I don't have an answer to the question the OP asked, but I do have a related question. Does anyone know of a good website to study calculus-- specifically limits from the left and right, and maybe some domain/range review (although that's technically college algebra).

 

[delano2000]

To add to the questions asked below:
Is it just derivatives and integrals for the calculus section?

 

[roziak]

To add to the questions asked below:
Is it just derivatives and integrals for the calculus section?

bingo

 

[diastole]

This worked for me. I learned the easier calculus like derivatives and the easier integrals and skipped the harder problems. Most people run out of time anyway so I figured it was better to spend my valuable time on the problems I had a firmer grasp on. You can skip a surprising amount of questions and still do well if you get the ones you did answer right.

I ended up using Math TV to brush up on certain concepts but I'm not sure if they go into calculus. I think you will find precalc topics there though.

 

[ckibe]

Youtube has some short precalc and calc videos Khanacademy and patrickJMT were very helpful to me. Hope this helps.

 

[delano2000]

Thanks. How about Statistics? I think this will be my weakest area.

 

[Monsterdaddy]

If the Pearson practice exams are any indication there will be 1/4 calculus and 1/4 precalculus. And the calculus problems can be very hard to finish in 50 seconds. No easy shortcuts on many of them and a couple of questions had multiple choice answers that would match answers you would get if you made a simple math mistake here or there. So really on those questions there was no easy way to guess on them or save time. (And the answers showed a 2+ minute not 50 second problem, LOL!) Hopefully those were the experimental questions.

Anyways, you need to know product rule, quotient rule, integration by parts, how to derive and integrate trigonometric functions. It also seemed the test creators had a hard-on for e and the natural log problems.

It's quite a rude shock because neither the Kaplan or McGraw study guides, nor the Kaplan practice test have this high degree of calc in them. Not sure why pharmacists need to know how to integrate ln(sin(x^a))*b*x type functions....🙁

P.S. Know how to do all your trig in radians not degrees and memorize certain values of sin, cos, etc.

 

[roziak]

1/4 of the QA section is calculus?

That doesn't sound right ...

 

[leolanoles]

Straight from the Pearson website:

Quanitative Ability:

Basic Math- 15%
Algebra- 20%
Probability and Stat- 20%
Precalculus- 22%
Calculus- 22%

 

[PharmOl]

You've got to know the definition of the derivative and know how to apply it. Also, very important to be able to manipulate equation of a line (tangent and through two points). From trig, just know that the derivative of cosA is -sinA, and the derivative of sinA is cosA. Also, tanA= sinA/cosA, CotA= 1/tanA, sec= 1/sin, and csc= 1/cos. Simple stuff. I think one problem was on integration by parts. As to stats, Kaplan book covers all you need having said that it lacks in all other math parts, lol. Good luck to everyone!

 

[Matt105]

Kaplan book says you do not need to know derivatives of trig functions and whatnot. I'm guessing it is wrong? Any other things you guys can think of for calc/pre-calc that the kaplan book doesn't cover? I'm gonna go read some amazon reviews, heh

 

[PharmOl]

Kaplan book also says that to make one glucose, Calvin cycle must turn three times, lol ... 🙂
I bought Person's practice test and it had trig integrals. Not many, maybe two or three. But it's two or three questions you might get right! They claim that those questions are drawn from the same bank as the actual test questions. Other people contradict that saying that they are easier.. Who knows. Better be on the safe side though. Good luck! (-:

 

[phathead]

Thanks. How about Statistics? I think this will be my weakest area.

What I did was bought a cliff notes book on Stats and went through that. They explain it well enough to ace them on the actual test

 

[Namishin]

Thanks. How about Statistics? I think this will be my weakest area.

Review statistics. Know how many groups of 2 you can make from 7, mean/median/mode, etc.
I skipped a few stat questions though... do they seriously expect me to take the time to calculate standard deviation?

 

[hckyplyr]

Review statistics. Know how many groups of 2 you can make from 7, mean/median/mode, etc.
I skipped a few stat questions though... do they seriously expect me to take the time to calculate standard deviation?

How many groups of 2 can you get from 7? I just studied chem allll day, and forgot how to figure that out...and yes I'm too lazy to look that up right now...thanks buddy

 

[Namishin]

How many groups of 2 can you get from 7? I just studied chem allll day, and forgot how to figure that out...and yes I'm too lazy to look that up right now...thanks buddy

N=7 n=2
(N!)/n!(N-n)!