Thread: Highschool mathematics

Im just wondering.. has anyone here taken (I dunno what the American equivalent is called) a course during highschool, called something along the lines of Maths 2 or something?
Here, its called 4 unit maths, and basically its syllabus consists of hardcore stuff like conics, mechanics, really gay looking curves, calculus (industrial strength) and all this other stuff which u end up repeating for the first 2 years if u take mathematics in university...

My question for those who have taken it is.. how do you learn all that in one year? I mean.. Im 1 year away from my last year in high school where Im gonna take this course, and Im .......... scared so far. Like, I try my best to learn some of the basic stuff in it like integration and just 'math' in general, but no matter how hard the question seems, the teacher will break my spirit by saying its only a 3 unit question. damn...

From perspectives of friends who have taken the course, done the final exam, and is still alive say that its one of those things where a 50% is considered a sick mark.. so.. yeah.

Anyone can recommend any study strategies? Right now my plan is to learn all of this and next years physics and chemistry this year, then concentrate on math the next. But it aint going very well cos apparently Chemistry is kinda hard too... o god. Life better get sweet after high school.

> If you think you will fail, you will fail.

... so cruel...

... but true.

Not really sure what you mean by industrial-strength calculus. If its multi-variable, then yeah, we do have it, but it generally takes a year and a half to get through all of it (Calc I-III).

umm.. I dunno what it means by multivariable but the most variables they'll give u at a highschool level are 2; x and y. sometimes u gotta do it implicitly and all this confusing stuff
integration by substitution, integration by parts, integration approximation methods etc and the whole calculus thing is just one topic, of the 8 or something. damn. i forgot to mention theres alot of complex numbers as well, and something about graphing complex number equations n stuff.. oh gay.

Sounds like Calc I and II then - single-variable calculus (referring to the number of independent variables being dealt with) - which is generally taken as one year (typically an AP course).

Its manageable in one year. Just gotta make sure you keep up, and don't let anything slip by half-understood - it'll only catch up with you later.

Sounds to me like it's an introduction to these concepts. They won't teach you how to do them well (that would take too long), but gives you an overview of the concepts so when you get into the U, you aren't starting from scratch.