I'm a seventeen year old junior in high school who's taking the required Algebra 2 as his third math. I need one more math, but I get a choice as to what I get to take next year. I want to take pre-calculus and then take either statistics or college algebra as an elective. I want to impress my teacher with some knowledge of the class beforehand, but I don't have the money for a "pre-calculus for dummies" book. Can anyone link me to a website where I can get a little knowledge of Calculus before I take it this August? Thanks.

Pre-calculus, in our school system is a variety of isolated topics from analytical geometry and linear algebra.

Yea, it's basically a review of algebra and geometry, so you'll probably do very well. Here's some specifics that I remember:

 

*Composition functions and how to compute them. Example of a composition function is cos x^2, since cos x is a function and x^2 is also one.

 

*learning how to graph functions by hand, and how to shift them up, down, left, right given an equation. Example: y = x^2 + 5 ... you take the basic parabola x^2, which has it's vertex at the origin, and you shift it up 5 units so that its vertex is at (0, 5)

 

* The conic sections (parabola, circle, ellipse, hyperbola) and how to graph them and what their equations are.

 

* Logranithms and exponential functions

 

*lograithmic expansion and contraction (ex: log 5 + log 7 = log 35, because 7*5 is 35 and they have the same base)

 

* basic series

 

That's mostly what comes to my mind. You won't get into any actual calculus in pre-calc...it's all just algebra and geometry that you will need to understand when you do get to calculus. If you want to learn a few things about actual calculus itself, I can give you a few starting points. I can't think of any websites off the top of my head, but I'm sure you could do a google search and find some.

Depending on the teacher, you might get into some derivatives of functions, but that wouldn't be until the very end of the course. Basically it's just a review of algebra, geometry, and trig.

I assume this is grade 12 course right? (sounds like my pre-cal grade 12). Everything that guy before me said is on it, ours also had probability and combinations / permutations. I hated combs and perms lol

In my precalc last year the biggest thing was trig - learn about those equations, proofs, unit circle, etc.

Yea, pre-cal is just a review of algebra, gemoetry, and trignometry, as everyone else said. If you feel comfortable with these principles then you'd probably won't have any problem in the class.

 

Here's a good resource website for learning pre-cal: http://www.themathpage.com/aPreCalc/precalculus.htm

 

Good Luck.

Try this site:

http://cow.math.temple.edu/

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/search.php?searchid=119920

 

Dave started some Calculus tutorials, I'm sure if he no longer wants to continue them, then someone else would be happy to fork them or something.