I don't know mathS but applied for Electrical Engineering, drop out?

I studied electronics at A-level, maths at A-level, and currently I'm going into the third year of my electronic engineering degree, all in Hull no less. :p

Degree level maths is difficult, A-level was hard but not terrible, the amount of that maths that as involved in electronics (at A-level) was small.

Where are you attending may I ask?
 
Just wanted to reiterate what people have said here regarding equations. Break everything down and do everything in simple parts, one bit at a time, and you can't go wrong. Also, I would say if an answer looks wrong then it probably is.
 
lol, teaching the derivative as messing around with powers on a polynomial. No, that's NOT what rate of change/derivative is.

Start by explaining rate of change, then show example on a polynomial. Someone touched on velocity, acceleration and then mixed it up with polynomials again!! :mad: Thats not going to help anything if the velocity is described in terms of sin/cos/exp blah blah*.


*no taylor/maclaurin expansions please :p
 
Amleto said:
lol, teaching the derivative as messing around with powers on a polynomial. No, that's NOT what rate of change/derivative is.

Start by explaining rate of change, then show example on a polynomial. Someone touched on velocity, acceleration and then mixed it up with polynomials again!! :mad: Thats not going to help anything if the velocity is described in terms of sin/cos/exp blah blah*.


*no taylor/maclaurin expansions please :p
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That's not what it is, but thats how you do it.

I could explain how (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h, works, then explain the limit approaches zero, and we just re-arrange (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h so it removes the divide by zero. But quite honestly, no one actually does it like that. Then I could explain this in visual form, with the tangent line.

They tend to teach you that, then teach you the power rule. The are also rules for sin, cos and tan. In real work, you are going to use the power rule, you are not going to (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h every time, unless you want 100 pages of working out.

You don't actually have to explain rate of change, its an obvious concept.
 
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UK-AL05 said:
That's not what it is, but thats how you do it.

I could explain how (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h, works, then explain the limit approaches zero, and we just re-arrange (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h so it removes the divide by zero. But quite honestly, no one actually does it like that. Then I could explain this in visual form, with the tangent line.

They tend to teach you that, then teach you the power rule. The are also rules for sin, cos and tan. In real work, you are going to use the power rule, you are not going to (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h every time, unless you want 100 pages of working out.

You don't actually have to explain rate of change, its an obvious concept.
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one of the first thing you said: 'if you want the derivative, mess around with the indices', to paraphrase. You haven't mentioned how rate of change corresponds to derivative or gradients on graphs.
 
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Amleto said:
one of the first thing you said: 'if you want the derivative, mess around with the indices', to paraphrase. You haven't mentioned how rate of change corresponds to derivative or gradients on graphs.
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Actually I did explain the rate of change in one of my posts, i explained with velocity and acceleration. The derivative of velocity is acceleration, the opposite called a anti-dervative takes acceleration and converts it into velocity. Everybody understands how acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, its the most intuitive example.
 
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Amleto said:
actually read my post.

e: alright, technically haven't should be hadn't
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What's wrong with it?

Anybody could tell, pretty straight away that a tangent line at a certain point on a graph is its gradient/rate of change at that EXACT point. It doesn't need to be explained.
 
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UK-AL05 said:
Calculus is pretty damn easy to start of with really.

If you want to find the derivative of something, its a fairly simple rule, minus one from the power, and add(actually multiply) the power to the front

a^5

becomes

5a^4.
...
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This is your first post about derivatives. What's a derivative? Why are all derivatives handled by polynomials?

I just found the wording particularly misleading tbh.
 
Amleto said:
This is your first post about derivatives. What's a derivative? Why are all derivatives handled by polynomials?

I just found the wording particularly misleading tbh.
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Then I later explained. Its this type of crap that puts people off, people arguing over details.

Let people enjoy a little bit of success with easy procedural rules, then move into detailed explanations. Once feel as though they have already performed it, they be much willing to learn it at a deeper level.

Throwing a whole concept at them in one go is wrong. Let them perform easy bits, and then let refine their own understanding.

Its like throwing people the idea of state change and turing machines, when all they really needed to was let them try a bit of easy programming first. Imperative Programming relies on a turing machine, but you don't teach them the turing machine first.


He will be soon learning to beauty of Euler's formula with his taylor series knowledge, if he gets that far.

Anyway his got khan to explain it ;)
 
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I'm not naturally that good at maths either, I have to work at it to understand things. Having said that, the book that got me through an engineering degree was this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-K-Stroud/dp/1403942463

Awesome book, takes you from adding up through matrices etc all the way to PDE's and all that jazz.

Definitely worth a look if you need a comprehensive idiots guide.
 
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