| Ch. 7 | AB Review Unit #1 | Ch. 9 | AB Review Unit #2 | Ch. 8a | Ch. 8b | Pathogen Pause | Fourth Quarter |
Textbook Solutions: Online, Android App, iPhone App (on the app, choose "Calculus and Linear Algebra", then "Calculus for AP 1e")
Links To All Class Notes: OneNote
Hi all,
Crazy week. I do not know what they tell you or do not tell you, so here is our current state:
- Teachers are not supposed to be assigning any work this week. If your teachers have...I do not know what to say. But for calculus, no work. Next week is Spring Break, so still no work then. After that, we will resume with the learning. And by learning, I mean reviewing. It sounds like our governor just cancelled school until mid-April, so this will happen online. The exact form of this review will be determined as we get closer to that happening.
- The end of 3rd quarter was postponed, but I am still eager to grade your test and your mock 1 free response, so expect those grades soon. Then I will drop your lowest quiz grades.
- I assume you all are hard at work constructing the perfect pathogen inspired playlist. If some of you come to a consensus on the perfect playlist, send it my way, and I will send it to the whole class. I know you have a group chat where you can send it yourself, but I need to feel useful somehow.
- When teachers start assigning you work, you will need a way to interface with that electronic work. You/your parent should have received an email with instructions on how to borrow an electronic device if needed, but in case you did not, here is that info.
- Although I am not assigning anything this week, if you want work to keep you busy or to catch up on a topic you feel like you did not get, let me know. For some people, that sounds laughable, but for others, they may want that practice. I am always happy to provide.
- I am a tad bored. So, here is my plan. I will post something new here every morning. I may give up a few days in, but if you are interested, stop by again tomorrow morning.
March 18
- Please enjoy these two videos I made before I was a teacher
- Counting Derangements using Recursion: Maybe you've seen this video before if you've googled my name. I made this in summer of 2015 when Khan Academy held a contest for people to submit videos explaining any topic they choose (Grant Sanderson, now the famous creator of 3blue1brown, was one of the people to whom I lost). I made this using a (practically) infinite sheet of paper and a set of sharpies, purchased just for the video. I spent so much time just rigging up a set up where I could unroll the paper as needed, have the camera mounted in a good location, and be able to see what I was doing. Like...so much time. I am proud of the result, even if now I see ways I could have done it better. And if you're willing to sit through some awkward pauses, it can be educational.
- Number Base Tricks: I made this less than a year after I graduated high school. The production value isn't great, but maybe you'll get some entertainment out of young me trying so hard. And maybe you'll learn something.
March 19
- Here's a video on Burnside's Lemma (also known as the "Cauchy–Frobenius lemma" or "The Lemma that is not Burnside's"). I thought about telling you a story about how I was inspired to make this video after I ordered a pizza and wondered how many distinct ways I could put toppings on it, but the truth is I just like combinatorics. I worried this video is not up to the high quality you expect, so I did say at the end of the video that I'd find a youtube video that explains it better, but I'm not doing that. If you do find one, you can send it my way and I'll post it here.
March 20
As you may have heard, College Board has sent out an update about how they are modifying the AP exam this year. The format of the exam is a whole thing and is not fully clear yet, but the topics have been modified in a way that should be interesting to you:
- No questions related to parametric, polar, or vector valued functions. No polar area, no questions that make me say "no, acceleration and concavity are different," and the only arc length formula you should know is the one for rectangular functions ("rectangular" meaning normal x and y)
- Limited number of quesitons about sequences and series
- Yes Geometric Series
- No nth Term Test
- No Integral Test
- Yes Harmonic Series
- Yes p-Series
- No Direct/Limit Comparison
- Yes Alternating Series Test
- No Absolute vs Conditional Convergence
- No Alternating Series Error Bound
- Yes Ratio Test
- Yes Finding Taylor Polynomial Approximations
- No Lagrange Error Bound
- No Radius/Interval of Convergence of Power Series
- No Finding Taylor/Maclaurin Series
- No Representing Functions as Power Series
So, the things we learned in BC that suddenly matter a little more are our advanced integration techniques (integration by parts, partial fraction decomposition, leave the odd one out trig, evaluating improper integrals), Euler's method, logistic growth, and arc length of rectangular functions. To help make things a little more clear regarding which sequences/series questiosn could be on the exam, I'm going to try taking a set of Ch 8 test review questions and marking it up showing which questions could still be asked. If you're the type of person who prefers to get information from the source, here is a page from College Board on the changes they are making. To match up their names of topics (e.g. Unit 8) with what it means, scroll to pages 27-30 on this exam description.
I'll of course keep you updated on what I know and what our plan is. As we go forward with online learning, it's important that you all complete whatever work I assign honestly. The purpose of all the work I will assign over the next month is to help you review and to help me know which topics we need to review more. Help me help you by completing everything authentically.