3 ms·

They're not always required, but they try to bridge what you already know (or are supposed to know) with what is to come and move at a slower pace. It's also so

They're not always required, but they try to bridge what you already know (or are supposed to know) with what is to come and move at a slower pace. It's also sometimes like an extra option for the less mathematically inclined who are still required to take such a number of math courses. On the other hand the only 'pre-' course I ever took (I tested out of pre-algebra somehow) was 'pre-calculus with honors'. I don't remember it much but I think it was mostly reviewing the harder topics from intermediate algebra aka 'algebra 2', which included trig (no separate trig course in my system), introduction to limits, and toward the end differentiation and maybe discrete summation. The 'honors' variant was also geared toward students who were planning on taking the more comprehensive 'AP Calculus BC' variant rather than the 'AB' variant.

jameshart 10y ago
There's a difference between AP calculus in Alberta and British Columbia? :)
- cozzyd 10y ago
  Yes. In Alberta, all you care about is the rate of change of the the price of oil and computing the volume of manure, so only the basics about derivatives and integrals are needed. In British Columbia, you have to worry about how to fit your oddly-shaped modern furniture into your tiny Vancouver apartment and find the region of convergence for your mortgage, so more advanced techniques are necessary.
- pirocks 10y ago
  Just in case you didn't know calculus BC is considered the harder AP calculus while AB is considered the easier.
  - jameshart 10y ago
    So I went to school in a country that is notorious for forcing kids to specialize early - the UK. In my age cohort, at age sixteen we had to pick just three subjects to study for the next two years. I chose 'pure and applied mathematics' as one of those three subjects. Some people chose 'pure mathematics' and 'applied mathematics' as Two of their subjects. I guess, vaguely, that doing the expanded applied maths would have included more calculus (not sure what that might have entailed - more second order differential equation stuff maybe?) - but there was definitely no point where I was faced with the choice of 'should I do a bit of calculus, or a lot of calculus?'. 16 year olds are not good at knowing how much calculus they need to learn. I was pretty happy just choosing 'do I want to learn some mathematics, no mathematics, or a lot of mathematics?' - and leaving it up to the school to figure out how much calculus to include. Based on my career since, the amount of calculus included was, it turns out, 'enough'.
    - arethuza 10y ago
      Worth noting that the Scottish education system is different - people do 5 or 6 highers at 16/17 and those are used for university entrance rather than 3 A-levels at 17/18. Scottish first degrees are 4 years rather than 3 in England - presumably to allow for this.
- greendragon 10y ago
  Hadn't thought of it like that before. :) A bit more usefully than the "one is harder one is easier" distinction, you can kind of think of the letters corresponding to semesters in a college course. A would be an introductory level (and possibly the only exposure a student might get if they're not interested in math but have to take a course), B would be a semester of Calculus 1, and C would be a semester of Calculus 2. Since high school the class goes year round you're still at a slightly slower pace than college, but if you do well on the AP BC test at the end many colleges will waive Calc 1 and Calc 2 from your requirements, whereas the AB test would only let you waive Calc 1. (A few other AP tests have different letter levels -- for physics only the C level seems to count and that's just basic Newtonian physics with very little calculus, though there is an optional E&M portion I never got to that may approach the Maxwell equations by the end... For computer science they used to have an A and an "AB", but they've dropped the "AB" since I took it. The "AB" basically got into actual algorithms and data structures, the A portion was basic programming and OOP heavy. All in Java.)

jameshart 10y ago

There's a difference between AP calculus in Alberta and British Columbia? :)

cozzyd 10y ago
Yes. In Alberta, all you care about is the rate of change of the the price of oil and computing the volume of manure, so only the basics about derivatives and integrals are needed. In British Columbia, you have to worry about how to fit your oddly-shaped modern furniture into your tiny Vancouver apartment and find the region of convergence for your mortgage, so more advanced techniques are necessary.
pirocks 10y ago
Just in case you didn't know calculus BC is considered the harder AP calculus while AB is considered the easier.
- jameshart 10y ago
  So I went to school in a country that is notorious for forcing kids to specialize early - the UK. In my age cohort, at age sixteen we had to pick just three subjects to study for the next two years. I chose 'pure and applied mathematics' as one of those three subjects. Some people chose 'pure mathematics' and 'applied mathematics' as Two of their subjects. I guess, vaguely, that doing the expanded applied maths would have included more calculus (not sure what that might have entailed - more second order differential equation stuff maybe?) - but there was definitely no point where I was faced with the choice of 'should I do a bit of calculus, or a lot of calculus?'. 16 year olds are not good at knowing how much calculus they need to learn. I was pretty happy just choosing 'do I want to learn some mathematics, no mathematics, or a lot of mathematics?' - and leaving it up to the school to figure out how much calculus to include. Based on my career since, the amount of calculus included was, it turns out, 'enough'.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    Worth noting that the Scottish education system is different - people do 5 or 6 highers at 16/17 and those are used for university entrance rather than 3 A-levels at 17/18. Scottish first degrees are 4 years rather than 3 in England - presumably to allow for this.
greendragon 10y ago
Hadn't thought of it like that before. :) A bit more usefully than the "one is harder one is easier" distinction, you can kind of think of the letters corresponding to semesters in a college course. A would be an introductory level (and possibly the only exposure a student might get if they're not interested in math but have to take a course), B would be a semester of Calculus 1, and C would be a semester of Calculus 2. Since high school the class goes year round you're still at a slightly slower pace than college, but if you do well on the AP BC test at the end many colleges will waive Calc 1 and Calc 2 from your requirements, whereas the AB test would only let you waive Calc 1. (A few other AP tests have different letter levels -- for physics only the C level seems to count and that's just basic Newtonian physics with very little calculus, though there is an optional E&M portion I never got to that may approach the Maxwell equations by the end... For computer science they used to have an A and an "AB", but they've dropped the "AB" since I took it. The "AB" basically got into actual algorithms and data structures, the A portion was basic programming and OOP heavy. All in Java.)