What Course Covers Hyperbolic Functions and Detailed Parametric/Polar Curves?

  • Context: Courses 
  • Thread starter Thread starter flyingpig
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Course Standard
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the coverage of hyperbolic functions, parametric and polar curves in university calculus courses. Participants share their experiences and inquire about when these topics are typically addressed in the curriculum, highlighting variations across institutions.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Homework-related

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses concern that hyperbolic functions and parametric/polar coordinates are often not covered in standard Single Variable Calculus courses.
  • Another participant mentions that their second Calculus course included hyperbolic functions and power series, but only briefly touched on polar coordinates.
  • A participant notes that their Calc 2 class covered differential equations extensively, suggesting differences in curriculum depth among universities.
  • Some participants propose that understanding hyperbolic functions may improve with study in complex analysis.
  • Several participants discuss the pacing and content of their courses, with some feeling that certain topics were inadequately covered or deemed unnecessary.
  • One participant shares that their class covered a variety of integration techniques but felt that many were not practically useful.
  • Another participant indicates that their university's curriculum included parametric and polar curves in Calc 3, while hyperbolic functions were skipped in Calc 2.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on when hyperbolic functions and parametric/polar curves are covered, with multiple competing views on the curriculum and depth of coverage across different universities.

Contextual Notes

Participants note that course content can vary significantly based on the institution and specific calculus track (e.g., honors vs. regular courses). There are mentions of different credit systems and course lengths affecting the curriculum.

flyingpig
Messages
2,574
Reaction score
1
Does anyone know what course will I cover stuff that isn't on the standard Single Variable Calculus topics?

In most universities, no one even covers the hyperbolic functions or paramatric/polar coordinates. Most don't even have the time to pick up the power series/taylor series.

My upperclassmen tells me that I wil get a chance to do Taylor series and other series when I get to third year. I forgot to ask them about the other topics like centre of mass and such.

Now personally I have had been exposed to some of these topics ike parametric functions and polar curves (not in great detail on studying the families of these curves..., I can graph them and find areas/volumes).

Does anyone know when I will cover hyperbolic functions and really get a chance to study paramatric and polar curves detailed?
 
Physics news on Phys.org


flyingpig said:
Does anyone know what course will I cover stuff that isn't on the standard Single Variable Calculus topics?

In most universities, no one even covers the hyperbolic functions or paramatric/polar coordinates. Most don't even have the time to pick up the power series/taylor series.

My upperclassmen tells me that I wil get a chance to do Taylor series and other series when I get to third year. I forgot to ask them about the other topics like centre of mass and such.

Now personally I have had been exposed to some of these topics ike parametric functions and polar curves (not in great detail on studying the families of these curves..., I can graph them and find areas/volumes).

Does anyone know when I will cover hyperbolic functions and really get a chance to study paramatric and polar curves detailed?
We've done hyperbolic functions, as well as power and Taylor series in our second Calculus course, but have only tangentially touched upon certain aspects of polar coordinates. The latter are in the lecture notes from previous years, though.
 


Everything you mentioned was covered in my Calc 2 class including an entire chapter on Diffy Q's. It's a 5 credit math class and the pace was ridiculous. At a lot of other schools around here Calc 2 is 4 credits so I'm guessing that's the difference. Take a look at the curriculum at your school for that class, most of the class webpages show exactly what we will be covered.
 


You will understand the Hyperbolic functions better when you study complex analysis. They are (roughly) rotations of the Trig functions by 90 degrees on the complex plane.

However, you should take it one step at a time...
 


Ryker said:
We've done hyperbolic functions, as well as power and Taylor series in our second Calculus course, but have only tangentially touched upon certain aspects of polar coordinates. The latter are in the lecture notes from previous years, though.

DrummingAtom said:
Everything you mentioned was covered in my Calc 2 class including an entire chapter on Diffy Q's. It's a 5 credit math class and the pace was ridiculous. At a lot of other schools around here Calc 2 is 4 credits so I'm guessing that's the difference. Take a look at the curriculum at your school for that class, most of the class webpages show exactly what we will be covered.

Thank you to you two for putting my university and myself to shame...


Pretty much all of the courses in our university are 3 credits and each course runs from for 3 to 4 months
 


We have only done power/Taylor series out of those in my Calc II course, which is also 4 months long. However, we did spend nearly a month on differential equations (2nd order linear homogeneous and nonhomogeneous), most likely because I go to an engineering-focused college. I guess every Calc curriculum is a little different! What book does yours use? We have Stewart's, b/c of the physics/engineering applications.
 


flyingpig said:
Thank you to you two for putting my university and myself to shame...

Pretty much all of the courses in our university are 3 credits and each course runs from for 3 to 4 months
Do you have a single Calculus stream? Because we took that in our Honors course, but I doubt they learn about those things in the regular one, at least from what people who are doing that tell me. Apart from that, I have no idea what class you'd be able to learn those things in.
 


mcdowellmg said:
We have only done power/Taylor series out of those in my Calc II course, which is also 4 months long. However, we did spend nearly a month on differential equations (2nd order linear homogeneous and nonhomogeneous), most likely because I go to an engineering-focused college. I guess every Calc curriculum is a little different! What book does yours use? We have Stewart's, b/c of the physics/engineering applications.

We also use Stewart's 6e (damn that man, this guy is actually coming out with another 7e book. I am now stuck with two editions of his book in my home lol). I think we spent like 2 months on just useless topics like "integration by table".

Ryker said:
Do you have a single Calculus stream? Because we took that in our Honors course, but I doubt they learn about those things in the regular one, at least from what people who are doing that tell me. Apart from that, I have no idea what class you'd be able to learn those things in.



my class covered (the highlights): integration by tables (which no one will ever use...), integration by trigonometric substitution (I find this handy knowing a few more tricks, but it's useless again...), integration by partial fractions (useful to know, but useless...), integration by parts (I think we spent like 3 weeks on this, a useful technique, but I don't think we needed to spend too much time on it), chapter 7.6 of Stewart's, which is "Integration Strategy" (basically a review class...again useless), sequence/series: geometric series (we did this in pre-calc, so I don't know why we are doing it again in calculus...), integral test.

That's pretty much all I can think of. Now that I remember, we didn't even do surface area and cross sections
 


flyingpig said:
my class covered (the highlights): integration by tables (which no one will ever use...), integration by trigonometric substitution (I find this handy knowing a few more tricks, but it's useless again...), integration by partial fractions (useful to know, but useless...), integration by parts (I think we spent like 3 weeks on this, a useful technique, but I don't think we needed to spend too much time on it), chapter 7.6 of Stewart's, which is "Integration Strategy" (basically a review class...again useless), sequence/series: geometric series (we did this in pre-calc, so I don't know why we are doing it again in calculus...), integral test.

That's pretty much all I can think of. Now that I remember, we didn't even do surface area and cross sections
Oh damn, that does seem a bit (= understatement) much :biggrin: We did that in a single lecture, and the whole lot of integration techniques and tables took less than or maybe a week :smile: It didn't save us from getting hardcore integrals, though, it's just that we were shown the technique and maybe a really simple (almost trivial) example, and then anything went as far as problems on the homework/midterm/final were concerned :smile: What you're saying seems to be in line with the regular stream at my university, though, and I think it's a bit odd you don't at least have an option to take a more rigorous course.
 
  • #10


We skipped hyperbolics but covered series in Calc 2 and Parametric/polar pretty extensively in Calc 3.


We also did a bit on ODE in calc 2 (separation of variables and homogeneous first order). I thought that was pretty pointless since pretty much everyone that takes Calc 2 also takes ODE.

My calc 3 class spent a lot of time on vector valued functions (very pointless and trivial) and rushed through multiple integration.
 
  • #11


flyingpig said:
Does anyone know when I will cover hyperbolic functions and really get a chance to study paramatric and polar curves detailed?

Your university has syllabi and course descriptions that will have this information. We can only guess.
 
  • #12


My three calculus courses have covered (in order):

Limits; differentiation; applications of differentiation; basic integration (including u-subs); hyperbolic, transcendental, and other funky functions (end of calc I); integration by parts; trig substitution; partial fraction expansion; integration tables; integration approximation; improper integrals; applications of integration; Power, Taylor, McLauren series; parametric equations and polar coordinates in calculus (end of calc II); vectors, with cross and dot product; analytic geometry in threespace, including vector-valued functions; derivatives with functions of n variables (partial derivatives); double integrals; and triple integrals with cylindrical and spherical coordinate systems.

If any of these are missing, then you're probably going to see them in another class.
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
2K
  • · Replies 21 ·
Replies
21
Views
3K
  • · Replies 10 ·
Replies
10
Views
2K
Replies
2
Views
1K
  • · Replies 7 ·
Replies
7
Views
2K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
3K
Replies
7
Views
4K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
2K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
3K
  • · Replies 12 ·
Replies
12
Views
3K