Hey guys. The school year has just started here in Michigan, and I've enrolled in an Advanced Placement Calculus class. Now I'm not too worried about this, but I really want to get an A in this class. It's a college level class (hence the Advanced Placement).

AP Calculus requires you to buy a TI-84 Plus Silver Edition graphing calculator, too. I don't know much about my new toy aside from reading the instruction manual and the pro-tips given to me with the calculator.

So, my questions are...

1. What should I expect to learn from this class (generally speaking)?

2. Are there any cool functions or secrets or can't-live-without features on the TI-84 that I should know about?

3. What jobs or real-life subjects can I apply calculus to?

All responses are helpful. Thanks in advance!

~ Emo

Ehh, can't really help with any calculator tips as such, but I know Calculus is a required subject if you're interested in any field of Engineering.
There's heaps of different engineering specialities ranging from mechatronics (software-hardware integration etc.) to chemical engineering (beer!) to civil engineering (buildings!) as well as many others.

Engineering is pretty flexible as well. The lecturer at my college started off as a mechanical engineer, then moved to electronics enginerring, and finally to chemical engineering, all at different jobs.

1. Calculus.
2. You won't need a calculator at all for this course - calculus is performed without any tools other than reference books.
3. Every job under the sun can be helped by calculus. Calculus is used to - in a broad sense - examine relationships between data. Even a dump truck driver could use calculus to analyse their route and efficiency.

Please pay attention in this class. Although it may seem like abstract pseudo-science bordering on magic, it is grounded in reality and is immediately useful. Plus it is the foundation of most maths/engineering/science that you may study later in life.

If there is one subject at school you pay attention to, make it calculus.

Thanks for your feedback guys. I'll be sure to pay attention.

Anyone else want to share some knowledge?
Inb4 suomynona comes in and makes us all feel dumb

When people take Cal I they typically learn about: Limits and continuity, derivatives and integrals; differentiation and integration of polynomial, rational, trigonometric, and algebraic functions; applications, including slope, velocity, extrema, area, volume and work (Copied from a Cal I course description).

But in a poor attempt to simplify things. I'll say that you learn about functions, to a degree you learn how the functions relate to their graphs. You also learn what the functions can tell you about their graphs, and how to make a function from a graph. There's some applications here and there most of them based around physics. This stuff comes after you learn about what it means for a function to be continuous and after you learn the meaning of a limit.

Calculators are relatively useless. My opinion (And my teacher's opinion) on calculators in general is that you shouldn't be using them if you don't know what they're doing. Do you know how your calculator gets its value for the sin(54.3)? No? Then you don't get to use it for sine and cosine functions.

The only secret about the TI-84 is that it can do integrals for you.

As for actual tips, my advice is to always write down parenthesis. You save a lot of time and effort in mistakes not made when you take the time to write down your parenthesis.

For example say you want to plug in '-2' into the function: f(x) = x^2.
Without parenthesis you might write this: -2^2
The above is a bit ambiguous, we don't know if you want to square '-2' or square '2' and then multiply by '-1.'

But with parenthesis: (-2)^2
There is no ambiguity in the above. So you won't make any mistakes in your work. I know this may seem like a joke to some, but this really helps you out in the long run.

Another key concept to realize is that the square root of 'x' squared is not x. It is the absolute value of x.

I'm gonna skip your last question and say something about AP Calculus. First off, AP doesn't mean it's college level. It means you're taking the class to take the AP exam. All you should care about is the AP exam. Make sure you take the time to study the AP exam so you can test out of Cal I. Note that not all colleges will let you test out of Cal I just because you scored high on your AP exam. When you're applying for college you should see their individual policies for the AP scores.

Oh, I didn't know that the class wasn't college level... Thanks for that insight.

It is college level in terms that what you learn in AP calc is the same you learn in a college calc 1 class.

Ahhhh! Is it college level or not?

It is Cal I. You will be learning Cal I. Cal I is taught in college. But does that mean Cal I is college level? College Algebra is taught in college also. Does this mean that Algebra I, II or whatever is the high school equivalent is college level also?

Really, whether or not something is college level is not something to get hyped up about. First off there are a lot of "levels" in terms of difficulty in college. There's a difference between how well a community college, university, ivy league, and whatnot will want you to know your subject. Heck, even within the same college there may be difference to how well each individual professor wants you to know each subject. There are several college professors out there that won't teach you Cal I as well as your high school teacher will. So, you should just focus on actually learning it.

Also as a last note: Cal I is where math starts to get fun (Opinion of a number of my friends, myself, me older bro, and some teachers.

Edit: I agree with culapou, the differences are negligible.

I agree with most of what you say but pretty much any college will teach you calculus the same. The biggest difference in schools is what the more specific classes they offer are, for example, UC Berkely school of engineering has way more courses to choose from than your local community college, they also have more funding for better labs. But calculus taught at any school is almost always exactly the same.