MA112 (EX19) AA - Sel.Top.Calculus

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Calculus: The Study of Motion and Change

It's finally here - the math class you've (probably not) been waiting for! Math 112 is the first semester of a traditional calculus sequence forced to sing for its supper. In other words, we will be bypassing much of the ornate notation and promises of relevancy 'once you've past the first 2 or 3 semesters' for concrete answers to questions we have about the world right now. Some of the notation remains just because it conveys useful information, but for the most part we're going to use the tools of calculus to answer two types of questions:

1) How quickly is something (population of aphids, sales of a new product, amount of water left in a pond) changing right now? and

2) How much total change has accumulated in a given time period?

And that's really the dirty little secret of calculus: there are really just two ideas at play. The first question takes up most of the semester and is known as 'differentiation' while the second takes up maybe 25% of the course and is called 'integration'. The end result can sometimes be called as beautiful as the music and art it has often inspired.