AP Calculus

3/13 – The key to Friday’s Quiz is in the Notes gallery.

2/26 – Log resources:
Make sure you’re prepared for Thursdays log test by reviewing properties of logs and some simple problems:
http://people.hofstra.edu/Stefan_Waner/Realworld/calctopic1/logs.html
The exercise set at the bottom is what I’ll base the quiz on.

If you’d rather watch videos, here’s a good (but slow) summary, but you should still do the exercise set at the bottom of the link above.
pt. 1
pt. 2

2/2 – Notes are now available

1/20 Random video of the week:

1/4 – Extra Help!
Several of you have been coming in to get extra help from me or Mr. Freeman. This is a good way to quickly gain skills to pass the Deriver’s License exam.  Our textbook is a good reference, but it’s pretty dense reading. You may want to pick up an AP Calculus study book of some sort to work through on your own. I recommend Barron’s, Princeton Review, or even Cliff’s Notes, but don’t get the Kraplan (er, Kaplan) book. These are pretty inexpensive on Amazon.com, but you can also find them in bookstores.

12/19 – Zombie Dogs extra credit.  The sheet passed out in class had a typo: the equation should be
zombie_dog_equation

12/18 – Here’s the homework for the break: some practice for the Deriver’s License! AP Calculus – Derivatives Practice worksheet

11/16 – Time to play with the Spacebus

11/15  Homework from Friday – Solution!

10/7
Unit 1 Exam is coming up on Friday.  To review, look at your 3 quizzes.  The questions will be taken straight from these, with small modifications.

9/28
Make sure you keep your quizzes to study.  Our unit test will be based closely on the quiz questions.

9/24
We began watching this video today.
9/23
What is calculus, anyway?  We’ll have a quiz on this text on Friday.
We watched this video about limits.

7/25
Greetings!

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer. You still have a month left, but I do have something for you to do in that time. You may wish to print this email for reference.

You have two tasks:

1. Register for the class discussion forum. Go to www.fortmath.com, click “Shields”, bookmark it, click “Mr. Shields’ Math Forum” (on the right side), bookmark it. Then follow the registration steps. Once you are registered, please do the following in order to become comfortable with the forum:

  • Create a new post about what you’ve done this summer. It does not have to be long.
  • Respond to someone else’s post.

This task is worth 10 points (1 homework assignment), and you will earn 10 bonus points if you complete this by 8/8.

2. Brush up on your math skills in 3 areas. Class will begin much more smoothly for you if you are competent in the following areas of Algebra and Advanced Algebra:

  • Slope. You need to be able to estimate the slope of a line segment visually. Practice this using Slope Explorer (hide everything, then click the candy for a random line, predict the slope, and check your answer). You will want to do this until you get pretty good; We will have a quiz on this skill the first week of school.
  • Exponent rules. Check out my Algebra Review videos, scroll to the bottom of the list and watch Exponents 1 & 2. There are practice problems and answers at the bottom of the page. These videos may help refresh your memory of the algebra skills that you are expected to have mastered at this point; try doing the practice problems in the other sections if you have time.We will have a quiz on these skills the second week of school.
  • Trig functions. Know how sine, cosine, and tangent are defined (don’t worry about cosecant, secant, cotangent), and know their values for common angles (multiples of 30º and 45º). This will require that you know the two special right triangles, 30-60-90 and 45-45-90. We will have a quiz on these skill the second week of school. I recommend checking out this online lesson and the one that follows it.

AP Calculus is a demanding course, but it is exciting to see how REAL WORLD problems can be solved with math that has been developed in only the last 300 years (the math you have used up to this point has been well-known for much longer).

I look forward to seeing you in September!

-Shields

9/21
Here’s a quick review of some common parent functions.

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