ok how about an example of plane coordinates, like a real life graph y'know , like dumps per day or something
Here is a useful defintiion: http://www.angelfire.com/biz7/michaelsdesign/EngineeringTerms.html And here is an explantion, somewhat clearer than many others: http://www.mathematics.jhu.edu/mathnew/undergrad/guidance/calculus.html If you have notional values to deal with, not absolute but representable by formulas, you might estimate the practical values to get a rough idea of a combined effect, but to be accurate you alternatively combine the formulas, hence calculus. --- Ron.
can you simplify into half these words in more sentences. my head is to dull to compute all of that properly.
Then why are you wanting to learn calculus? Do you have a good handle on basic algebra? Basically I think what Ron is trying to get at is this: given that we want to know something about a function (like say the area under the curve on the graph), we break the problem up into an infinite number of smaller problems, solve those, then combine them back up into a single solution. For example: We want to know the area under the curve x<sup>2</sup> from x=0 to x = 1. Well, what we could do is put a bunch of rectangles under it , find the area of each rectangle, and add them up. However, we missed some of the area. So, we make the rectangles "less wide" and add more. We keep doing this to infinity, evetually arriving at the area being 1/3.
The area of an ellipse is (pi)ab, where a is the semi-major axis length and b is the semi-minor axis length. Much easier than the circumference.
Oh dear. Not really, no. I was already trying to be as brief as possible. If it is any consolation I failed my advanced level Maths examination at school because of a lack of work done on the calculus. The tutor was awful, barely attempting to explain the use of it, to motivate us, which was probably because he had never used it himself, except to try to teach it. Then, 20 years later, attempting an electronics college course as a mature student, I found myself obliged to sit another lot of exams with calculus involved and it was no easier then to motivate myself because I had never had to use it in the mean time. To get to grips I would suggest therefore to look for a friend who has to use it in the World at large on a daily basis, to begin from there, the practical need. There may be one or two of them around here somewhere. --- Ron.
