Calculus
polycounter lvl 4
Calculus is the language of Satan! Seriously though, is there anybody here that is actually good at it that would be willing to give me some tips? I can't learn this to save my life. It seems like no matter how well I learn the topics, I'm never prepared for any exam. I always do problems from my textbook along with practice exams I find online, but I never seem to remember the material for more than a week.
This probably isn't the best place to ask about this, so I'm fully willing to accept the barrage of dick pics, memes, and other goodies anybody might have to contribute.
This probably isn't the best place to ask about this, so I'm fully willing to accept the barrage of dick pics, memes, and other goodies anybody might have to contribute.
Replies
Thanks for the link Monk, I haven't used Khan Academy since highschool but I'll give it another shot. I've got another exam coming up and I'm pretty terrified, I've already had two nightmares about it lol.
One day I'll dump this shitty textbook in order to work on my art...one day!
The fundamental beauty of art is that it's a creative process, right?
Mathematics is intrinsically creative. We begin by creating the number 1 and its meaning. We then define nothing by removing 1 from itself. Suddenly the entirety of all mathematics and by extension science birth from that single notion. The rest is discovery, like beginning a painting with a single brush stroke, only to discover the rest by continuing the Same pattern. Same pattern. Same pattern. Same pattern. Bam - a consistent painting. It didn't begin with nothing. It began with a brush stroke.
You probably haven't grasped the basic concepts and are just trying to memorize specific problems and solutions.
Wait until you get to do transforms.
And when the equations become to difficult to solve analytically, you get to create models in Matlab and look for instability. Lots of fun, actually!
Without seeing your problems it's hard to know what to say to help. The best thing that always helped me is knowing calculus (differentiation and integration) through using position, velocity and acceleration and their relationship.
If we can work out the instantaneous gradient of the position curve, we can work out what the velocity is. If we can work out the gradient of the velocity curve, we can work out what the acceleration is.
And it goes backwards as well. If we can work out the integral - the "area under the curve" of the acceleration, we will know the velocity. If we can work out the integral of the velocity then we will know the position. So using this we can calculate the position at any point based on a start position and an acceleration curve.
The alternative to using calculus in games is often using Euler integration, which is pretty crappy for an varying frame rate.
I was really struggling with remembering all of the necessary formulas for the test as we needed to know all of the inverse trigonometric derivative formulas along with all of the integration formulas, plus every major theorem in between in my book. I was having the problem of remembering everything because I never have to use most of this stuff beyond when the teacher is lecturing and giving a specific problem on it, so I tend to forget about it.
I just finished taking my exam and I'm quite confident about my grade. I don't want to jump to assumptions but I might have actually gotten a B, which is pretty great in my opinion since the class average is always around the 40% area.
It seems like a lot of you actually use knowledge of Calculus on a pretty frequent level. I'm struggling with Calculus 1 at the moment but I wanted to make a plan of action to improve my math skills. I enjoy doing math problems, but I just suck at everything.
Everybody works under the same variables though, and so complaining about it won't do anything. I think I have a decent understanding of most of the basic concepts of differentiation (minus the epsilon-delta limit stuff which was covered in the beginning of my book.) I'm going to start reviewing for my final which is in about a month, my professor's individual exams tend to be more difficult than the final so I think I could be in a good place for this semester.
I'd imagine Calculus 2 relies heavily on all of the topics of Calculus 1. My school doesn't require us to go past Calculus 2 for CS, so I guess that's not so bad, but I'd imagine Calculus in game development would require even more advanced knowledge of Calculus.