| MAC 2312: Calculus II | |
| Advice, help, and links | |
| Getting Help | |
|
Students are welcome to visit during office hours and strongly encouraged
to ask questions during our weekly problem session. I will ususally arrive at
the classroom several minutes early and can take quick questions then, or just after
lecture. There is no shortcut to learning math--you must work out problems to develop and reinforce your understanding of computations and concepts. It is only natural that some of the homework problems resist initial attempts at solution. In fact, getting stuck is an important part of the learning process because it helps isolate deficits in our understanding. Addressing these deficits allows us to master the material. Thus, it is important that we first seriously attempt to solve a problem ourselves before seeking outside assistance. Outside assistance is not bad, but to seek it out too soon or too often is to cheat ourselves of an opportunity to learn. Indeed hard earned knowledge will stick the longest and the best. I must stress the important of keeping up on your assigned homework to make the most of the problem sessions. Watching me do a problem is of little value until you have tried it yourself. Remember, on the exams you must be able to do the problems without books, notes, solution keys, friends, or instructors for help. Thus when doing homework, I suggest that you wean your self from these sources of information. When doing the first few problems of a particular sort, it is reasonable to refer to an example. The next few problems you should only seek help when stuck. As you proceed, you may only want to compare your answer to another. You'll know that you have done enough when you are sufficiently confident in your work that you don't need to look back. Some students are at the other extreme--they see readily how to do the problems and may not complete the homework. The price of this is a potential hit to your homework grade. As a compromise, I would encourage you to work backward in each subsection of the problem set to verify your ability to do the problems and maximize the likelyhood of doing a graded problem. Stop working backwards when the problems get too easy for you. | |
| The department tutoring page provides some useful information about tutoring labs, private tutors, and on-line help. | |
| The publisher makes solutions to odd problems available on-line. The publisher's web page for this text is here. | |
| Students may wish to form study groups. I encourage this and allow the use of the course mailing list for this purpose. However, a word of caution is in order. Since students are responsible for taking their exams alone, they must take care not to become dependent upon the assistance of others in getting started on problems. | |
| Around the Web | |
| The following websites treat topics relevant to calculus,
and may be useful as supplemental sources of information.
I can't take any credit or blame for anything on these sites--I
did a search and then took a quick look to see that they seemed
appropriate. There are surely more pages of interest out there.
For your consideration are the following:
Here are some other sites that the curious may find of interest. A search will turn of many other sites on the general topics. I've only included those which I have found to have material relevant to the course and which are fairly comprehenseive (I may have missed some, but you can do a search as well as I). Definitions : Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics Biographies of mathematicians (some of whom developed the material we will learn in this class):
MacTutor (St. Andrews) History of math: | |
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