17calculus blog

Have you ever taken the time to look at how many calculus youtube videos there are? If you are trying to learn calculus, either on your own or to supplement your classwork, watching youtube videos is a great way to get different perspectives on the material to help you understand. But where do you start?

Even if you were able to sort through and reject the bad videos that are either incorrect or don’t teach you anything (which is very difficult to do when you are learning the topic) and only focus on the good videos, there are still a LOT of good ones out there.

We are working, at 17calculus, on going through each video, placing the good videos discussing theory on each page with an introduction on what is in the video, so that you will know what videos will help you and what you can expect to see in the videos.

Then, rather than just throwing all the videos with examples together and making you sort through them, we are organizing them into practice problems. This should help you know which videos will help you, while at the same time giving you practice problems, which we said in a previous blog entry, is the key to you understanding calculus.

We are well on our way to accomplishing this on every page. Check the topic you are currently studying to see if we have finished that page. If not, contact us and let us know, so that we can work on it for you, time permitting.

By the way, you can still watch the raw videos that we think are the best on our new youtube page. We are building playlists of the videos, which you can watch either in youtube or in the additional information panel at the very bottom of each page. Building these playlists is not as further along as the other updates we mentioned above. But we will continue to add more great videos as we go along.

As promised we have been adding lots and lots of practice problems. We now have over 500 practice problems with about half of those on infinite series. We have been focusing very hard on infinite series since we know most students struggle with them. However, they are not hard as long you work plenty of practice problems, more than you usually do for other calculus topics. The infinite series practice problems are nearly complete . . . for now. We will always add more practice problems but currently, we need to focus on other areas.

One of those other areas is limits. We have over 150 limits practice problems now. We have expanded the discussion on trig limits, the epsilon-delta definition of the limit and the squeeze theorem. The last limits page to get updated with content and practice problems will be one-sided limits, with maybe a face-lift here and there on other pages.

After that . . . well, we haven’t really decided. We are leaning toward multivariable calculus topics, applications of derivatives or integrals or maybe parametrics.

In the meantime, check out these PatrickJMT free practice problems. You will find plenty of written out practice problems that should hold you for now. PatrickJMT is one of 3 featured instructors on our site that we think explains calculus well, uses good notation and is a good instructor. We highly recommend his videos.

What would you like to see? What is coming up in your class in the next few weeks? Let us know and we may be able to get you some practice problems.

Practice problems are the core of learning calculus. You can watch videos, read books, listen to lectures, watch others work problems and you still won’t get calculus until you sit down and work practice problems on your own and wrestle through every derivative, every integral, every series test . . . well, just everything!

Here at 17calculus, we are working hard to bring you more practice problems. Over the next few weeks, you will notice lots more practice problems showing up. We have over 300 practice problems now but we hope to have LOTS more soon. Exactly what do we mean by ‘lots’?

Well, not only have we wanted to bring you tons of practice problems for a long, but we also noticed another problem. We have over 1400 videos, the best videos available on youtube. But how do you know which videos to watch? Some of them explain theory, but most just show examples. And most of the time you have to actually watch the video to know if it applies to you. That sounds like a good way to waste time.

So, to solve both problems, we are going through each video, and telling you which ones discuss theory and which ones have examples. Then we post the video so that you can watch only what applies to you. You will be able to watch theory without having to look at examples that you may not understand yet. And you will be able to work practice problems without having to wade through all the theory, searching for that perfect practice problem.

The examples from many of the videos are shown as practice problems at the bottom of each page. You can tell they are videos because the button to show the solution will say ‘Video Solution’. The practice problems with buttons labeled ‘Detail Solution’ are practice problems with worked out solutions and may or may not contain a video as well.

So check out the first few pages we’ve been working on listed below. Give us a few months to get this done. Like we said, we have over 1400 videos at the moment and more are added periodically. But we will be working diligently to bring you the best videos and the best practice problems for calculus available online. Our goal is to have at least 25 practice problems for each technique with more for difficult topics. So, to answer our question above, lots means hundreds!

Keep working those practice problems and let us know what you think!

Infinite Series
Limit Comparison Test
Direct Comparison Test
nth-Term Test
Limits
Finite Limits
Infinite Limits
Integrals
Trigonometric Integration
Trigonometric Substitution

We are glad to bring you news about updates to the 17calculus menus. Over the next few days, you will notice the menus move from the left side to the top of the screen. As you scroll down, the menu will stick to the top of your window, so that it is handy no matter where you are on the screen.

The new menu is more compact and concise, containing only the links that we anticipate you will need, depending on what page you are on. So, for example, if you are on a single variable calculus page, you will have access to all of the other single variable calculus pages as well as the main pages of the other main topics on the site, multi-variable calculus and differential equations, without a lot of extra links that you probably will not use. This simplified form should make it easier for you to find what you are looking for.

We also believe that navigation on small screen portable devices like iPads and iPhones will be easier for you until we get complete compatibility with these devices implemented.

Additionally, we have removed the functionality related to Zopim to submit questions. The use of flash by the plug-in slowed load time significantly. So we decided to remove it for now. We may research another option that doesn’t rely on flash. Until then, feel free to go to the contact page to submit a question by email. You will find a utility there to be able to send properly formatted equations to us. This should make answering them much faster. Make sure you read the short instructions there on how to get your question answered quickly. We really do want you to ACE calculus.

Let us know what you think what you think about these changes.

For several months, you have had the option to contact us by leaving a message in a box in the lower right corner of the calculus pages. We recently added several ways for you to ask us general questions, calculus questions or just let us know how we are doing from the contact page. Included on that page is also a way to format and send us equations, even complicated ones including integrals and sums. See the contact page for details. Make sure to follow the instructions so that we can answer your question quickly and completely.
We hope to hear from you soon!

To quote the Terminator, I’m back! After being absent for a few months while our office moved from the central US to central Europe, we are planning to spend more time in the next few weeks getting ready for fall semester. In addition to adding videos and practice problems in all subjects as we come across them, our main focus will be to more fully develop the multi-variable calculus pages, mostly in the area of vector analysis.

As usual, if you have a specific area that you would like us to work on, feel free to leave a comment here or go to 17calculus and leave a message in the help box in the lower right corner of the screen. You can also email us at the address found on the about page.

Make sure not to waste your summer by studying too much or too little. Spend a lot time relaxing but also take a few hours (at least 10) every week to go over some of the material from your spring courses so that you don’t lose that newly-learned material.

Also, keep an eye on your schedule for fall. Summer is a great time to get a head-start on your fall classes. Here are a few ideas.
- Get your textbooks early, now, if you haven’t already. Scan through them and read carefully the first 2 or 3 chapters.
- See if you can get a syllabus from a previous semester (preferably from the same teacher that you will have) to get an idea of where your instructor will start. Start reading and studying now.
- Read books on how to be a better student. You probably didn’t learn how to be a good student before college. It is something that needs to be developed and studied separately. You will find some books in the
17calculus bookstore.
- Go back to your spring semester material to review difficult material that you struggled with. This is especially important if the material was a prerequisite for a class coming up this fall or later in your degree program.

But most of all, relax. Your mind and body need to rest after the intensity of later year. Take care of yourself with proper rest, exercise and nutrition.

See you in the fall!

The MathJax update is complete and equations are now rendering correctly. Additionally, problems with Google Chrome and Safari, both on Mac OSX, have been fixed by the new version of MathJax. The rendering seems to be much quicker too. So I think the update was worth the inconvenience. I hope these problems did not interfere with your calculus learning.

MathJax, the system we use to display equations, is in the process of updating. This could take several hours (up to a day) to correct itself. So by late Monday, everything should be working again (according to the MathJax people).
Thanks for your patience.

New to 17Calculus.com – Voting Feedback.

You now have the option of giving feedback on pages, practice problems and exams. We are in the process of adding to each page so that you can tell us if you like the information. You can also use this as a way to quickly tell us if you find a mistake (in which case, please let us know what the mistake is by sending a message using the zopim chat).

The voting looks like this.


To vote, you just click on one of the triangles and the vote count changes to reflect your vote. You can un-vote by clicking the same triangle again or click the other triangle to change your vote.

The first page to receive this update is the Finite Limits page. There is a voting option for the page and for each practice problem. Let us know what you think.

We have an exciting new addition to 17calculus. You can now ask questions directly and get your answers immediately when we are online. If we are away, you can submit your questions and they will be answered as soon as we are able.

We are trying out Zopim Chat on each page. Let us know what you think and if you need help with your calculus material. All help is free.