Calc 2 References for Winter Break?

[MidgetDwarf]

I hear Lang's books are quite advanced though.

Depends, I found his Basic Mathematics, Intro to Linear Algebra, and his Calculus series books, easy to read and digest. They suffer from very few problem sets. I heard his Algebra book is very hard, but I have not gotten there.

There harder because they do not spoon feed you with 10 images on every page, and here's the formula, plug it into every problem type of book. He makes you think.They are very concise and easy to reference. Some sections are too concise in my opinion, but having another book alleviates this problem.

People will laugh at me, but I did not understand sequence and series during calculus. Stewart explained it to me so well. So some books are better at covering other topics than others.

Remember, it takes time to learn mathematics. Many people will say there book is terrible, because after reading the section in under 5min they cannot solve the problems in the sections. This shows laziness on the readers part.

 

[MidgetDwarf]

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...ate-physics-degree.847858/page-2#post-5319139

this thread, sums up what I think about many of my fellows students.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...ate-physics-degree.847858/page-2#post-5319139

Student100 post in particular, regarding how students behave towards actually using their brain to work.

 

[micromass]

I hear Lang's books are quite advanced though.

Depends on what you mean with advanced. Sure, some of his books are ridiculously advanced. For example his differential geometry is extremely advanced. So advanced it's useless to almost everybody.
But Lang has some books covering very basic material too. For example, basic mathematics and his two courses on calculus. That is not to say that they aren't difficult. They are very different from the usual calculus textbook in that he really wants you to understand the material. Just memorizing or plug/chug will not suffice to get you through to Lang. On the other hand, it's a lot easier than Spivak and Apostol.

 

[Thewindyfan]

Thats a good method, but not fool proof. There is gone be a time where you have an incompetent professor. So it comes down to, pass or fail. The only way to pass is to cross reference atleast 2 sources. Mathematics takes time to digest, and it is no wonder things are hard to grasp on the 1st or even 3rd reading. The good thing is that, mathematics can be learned. You just have to attack it, re-attack it, and go over it again multiple times. I think Stewart is one of the easier books to read in my opinion. I may have found it easy, because I always read my assigned textbook front to back, in every class, including stuff like Art History.

Tutoring at the college also helps.

I agree with this as well, but I'm glad I had a great professor for my first calculus course. A majority of the material I studied the previous semester is easy to digest from the reading in Stewart's book but there's certain things at least for me, like the solids of revolution concepts, where it was more confusing to learn about it from the reading as opposed to talking about it with my fellow peers and teacher assistants. I think it just really depends on how you learn material and how you maximize the way you learn the material. I understand solids of revolution pretty well but the whole shell method and disc/washer method explanations was kind of weird to think about before knowing what kind of area a cross-section would form, at least for me.

That or I probably didn't read that section as closely as I should've at first before I started practicing problems, haha.