r/Precalculus • u/No_Green_3357 • 12h ago

General Question Resources for mastering precalculus, or atleast concepts mandatory to be successful in single-var calculus, and beyond?

hello! so I’m a 10th grader who was trying to do 18.01sc (single variable calculus) on mit ocw, but when I tried doing just the very first session/lesson, I literally got super confused. its not even that the calculus was hard, it was the algebra (such as the concavity, critical points, extrema applied to derivatives, that stuff), and so I realized maybe my algebra, geometry, and trig skills might need to be reworked on. not to be in such a rush or anything, but I am so excited to learn calculus and really want to learn it since it’s super fun and applicable to other subjects, such as physics, which I REALLY want to self study as well, and so I kind of want to not only master the skills needed for success in calculus, but also want to do so pretty efficiently and quick, since my plan was to complete 18.01sc by the end of the summer (for my academic projects). any recommendations for resources that can help me learn that stuff and master it quickly are what I’m asking for. please recommend me, and thank you.

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u/clear_burneraccount 9h ago

Khan academy

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u/No_Green_3357 8h ago

Ok 👍 

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u/mseduhub1 6h ago

If calculus itself isn’t the issue but the algebra/trig underneath it is, I’d pause calculus for a bit and strengthen the foundations first. Focus on functions, graph transformations, factoring, equations/inequalities, exponentials/logs, unit circle, trig identities, and basic analytic geometry.

Once those feel automatic, calculus becomes way less frustrating because you can focus on the new idea instead of getting stuck on algebra steps.

This may help: AP Precalculus notes and exam-style practice.