Week One: Learning MIT Calculus in 5 Days

[Mathephysci_tutor]

Hi Scott Young. I live in South Africa. I am really inspired by what you did. I am attempting to learn Mechanical engineering from MIT curriculum because u want to enhance my engineering skills. I really hope it goes well. I am gonna learn it a my own pace but I am really inspired

[floatingsara]

I appreciate you did an experiment before undertaking this challenge, when you said in July you took the class in Physics to see if you would be able to carry on with the rest. I think we feel restrained from attempting new things just because we fear an utter failure, but if we could make a little test before, we could go on with much more committment and motivation.

[shiinaoneesama]

I learned it the night before my exam DERP

[vanessatreacy]

Awesome! Thanks a lot! I am 11 years old and learning calculus. My math teacher said I could skip 5th grade and move on to 9th and 10th grade math, and this has helped so much!!!

[doaatash]

i like how u stick to what you want, i truly admire ur goal

[SunilSkanda]

I'm starting to learn calculus, again. It's been a while (actually 4 years ) since I touched the subject. To be honest, I've totally forgotten about what its really about except a few techniques that I had used to solve some math problems in my high school. Now, what I want to know is that what kind of textbook(s) (for self study) did you use or do you recommend while learning MIT Calculus course. I've searched the internet for the best books that are written so far. Michael Spivak, Tom M. Apostol, Richard Courant, Thomas, Stewart etc are the names that pop up very often when asked for recommendation. Some of these books use traditional approach and one Introduces Integral before differentiation and other just glosses over the details without much giving clear explanations. All of these books are more or less equally recommended as Calculus Textbook, but I don't know which one to pick. I do know this, I want to truly understand the subject with rigor and letting the reader understand why this was invented, enough challenging practice problems and more importantly, I want the text to be engaging as I'll be learning on my own and don't want to fall asleep with dry explanations. Let me know which books along with MIT Calculus course would be good for me.

[rbsupercool]

Scott you're awesome, though i've taken a course in calculus in high school, i need to brush those skills up again.. i hope it will help me in my future programming tasks, as you're saying.. thanks.. 

[quocphantruong]

Your video is actually amazing.
I tried to follow you.
Thank you - this is what modern student need

[nsakic]

Hi, thank you for uploading all these videos. My question is on your daily routine, like finishing an entire class in one week is just unbelievable. Are you working full-time? How are you allocating your time to these classes. Since this is in the past, how have you allocated your time to these classes? 

[Dean]

The first thing you need to do is take calculus through differential equations. Then later on, lie about learning it in 5 days.

[JohnHutcheson]

I just stumbled across this channel while searching for MIT lectures on signals and systems.

[aliensoup]

This is absurd. Maybe possible for the very gifted prodigy, but not an average student. I was an A and B math student up to 12th grade high school. When I took intro calculus in my first semester of college I bombed. 35 years later I started to seriously learn calculus using online and video lecture sources, including the MIT Calc 1 series. In fact I viewed up to 6 different lecture programs simultaneously, along with online textbooks and problem sets. Many MONTHS later I took an online calculus exam and failed. So I repeated the entire process over again, retook the test and got an 80% passing grade. Several years later I am working toward the end of Calc 3 having already repeated that a couple times.

The take-away is that calculus is hard for the average person. You cannot acquire a functional understanding in only 5 days. Truly understanding calculus requires dozens of hours just doing problems. You cannot simply memorize the theorems like the lyrics of a song, you must understand and internalize the concepts, and that takes time and practice. Heck, I memorized the lyrics of a song in Japanese, but that does not mean I understand Japanese.

[dekippiesip]

 
"Do you guys think its possible to learn calculus 2 or 3 in five days? Im taking calculus 2 right now and want to get ahead."

 No I don't think so. 5 days is a short ammount of time, way too short to learn all of calculus and internalize the material. You can learn a lot in 5 days but only the basics like differentiating and integrating relatively easy functions. If you only learn the tricks that's very easy, if you want to understand the proofs and the logic behind the simple tricks it get's harder depending on the ammount of rigour you're satisfied with.

[dAvrilthebear]

Did you do problem sets after each set of topics? I've found that these are more difficult then the examples they show during the lectures and with tutors. The amount of time it takes to cover this gap is enormous.
The one with a satellite over a flat earth killed me!)

[davidwilcox]

I've been using many of the techniques Scott talks about not to learn faster but to learn more efficiently.

[Joao_]

You could put the links to the class videos and materials of each week so it is easier for us to follow the experience

[SlushGuppy]

Already did, and thanks. You'd be surprised what you could do with the right attitude.

[quocphantruong]

Admire your ability
The best I can do is in 2 weeks (Linear Algebra) but not fully understand them all. Just general idea and concept, then I often visit the lecture again and again afterward.
Following the formula is easy; but the difficult part is understanding how they actually are and why is it
For example: engeinvalues and engeinvectors; formular and calculation is quite easy and straight forward; but not enough to figure out the application of its immediately. I have to take other class; then when it comes to eigenvalues and vectors; I really understand why it is like that
For most of other students; I believe a range from 2-4 weeks concentration for a subject is fair and good enough.
It is not the matter of how fast you can learn. It is matter how much you can understand and figure out the application of its.I can make it in 5 days, but what left is rule of formula but not the core idea of matter.

[JohnnyJimJams]

Good luck Scott. As always, very inspiring stuff.

[NiceyNiceGuyMike]

I like the post class discussion and how you think the topic is important to your goal.