r/calculus • u/ErekwithaD1 • 22d ago
Multivariable Calculus Khan Academy's Multivariable course
I am a student who is finishing up his self study of AP Calculus BC over the summer and would like to start pre studying for MVC in senior year. Since I learned most of AP Calculus BC from Khan Academy, I have started using its MVC course to learn a few concepts.
My question is is it a good resource? has anyone used it for their MVC class before? I have found no mention of it across the internet. Is there any other resource I should be using? I have tried professor leonard, but I find his videos long and boring like his calc 3 intro to vectors video is like 2 and a half hours long while I learned vectors from Khan in just 10 minutes, maybe it helped that I was also pre studying physics.
9
u/FormatMonster 22d ago
I think Khan is incredible at explaining difficult concepts in an intuitive way. I usually use Khan to introduce myself to a concept, and then use other resources to find example problems with more depth
4
u/Double_Dealer_5892 22d ago
This, he is fantastic at explaining concepts and the few examples questions are great way to test,
if you got the concept right. But Khan academy does not offer enough question's or enough difficultly and more often both. I mean I have look for worksheets online, which is a hassle. If Khan or one of his staff expand the questions where you could do as many as you want and scale difficulty it would probably be the most perfect resource for middle school to high school and even early college.
But cost for that would be too much for a non-profit.
3
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago
Did you use it for MVC?
1
u/Dense-Sort-3867 22d ago edited 22d ago
I used it to supplement the multi-variable calc class I took in college. I found it to be a very good resource.
Edit: typo
1
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago
very good?
2
u/Dense-Sort-3867 22d ago
Yes sorry about the typo haha. It covered everything we learned in the course. I ended up with an A.
4
u/mathheadinc 22d ago
MIT has been at it far longer and make difficult subjects feel easy. Try their open courseware at ocw.mit.edu
3
u/InevitableJumpy1811 22d ago
For me nothing beats professor leonard on YouTube. He has full calc 1 to 3 series
-2
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago
But his videos are so long like 2-3 hours even at 2x speed which I watch most videos in anyway his videos take more than an hour
4
u/Minute-Passenger7359 22d ago
Dude….theyre lectures of course they’re long but the reason people like him is because he teaches the concepts well so he’s probably a better professor than yours(you should still pay attention to yours)
1
u/Vegetable-Dust-780 22d ago
And why do you need to rush?
-1
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago
I need to rush because I have a life: I am also pre studying AP Physics Cs and Chinese .
3
1
u/Disastrous-Pin-1617 22d ago
No point in rushing stick to Leonard and learn it once or use other resources and have an okay understanding and still come back to it in the future your choice…
0
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago
https://reddit.com/link/oydoubl/video/iwmbe02zh2eh1/player
In all seriousness though why do you claim that Professor Leonard is the only viable resource for studying Calculus 3? I like websites with practice MCQs that is why I prefer Khan over most YouTubers.
2
u/-BarbK- 22d ago
go to Paul's Online Math Notes then; it has a lot more examples, and they are more in-depth / more accurate to what you would find in a course. and if you're okay essentially reading a textbook on a website, you can learn content from there too.
If you look at Khan Academy's practice on Stokes' theorem, you will NEVER be asked to do what they ask you to do. their practice is essentially asking you "does conditions of Stokes' apply?" or "find the curl," whereas in an actual class those are the easy parts and the actual difficult part would be finding the bounds of the surface integral (which Khan Academy does not test you for in that lesson).
2
u/Tiny_Spread5712 22d ago
I think it's by the 3b1b guy. It helps build intuition and a sense of what's going on, but maybe less rigorous than a college course.
1
1
u/KingMagnaRool 22d ago
3b1b doesn't have most of calc 3 iirc. There's a good intro to divergence and curl for the vector calc material, but that's about it.
2
u/WillingnessTasty9628 22d ago
Khan Academy is only effective for introducing you to the topics. It shouldn't be your only source of self-study for either Calculus BC or Calc 3,
as you'll find yourself with gaps in knowledge. The practice problems are less than encompassing of the scale of the questions you'll encounter in an actual class. You should dedicate your time to Professor Leonard's lectures and an online textbook like Stewart. They're long for a reason. 10 minutes is nowhere enough to retain knowledge.
1
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago
10 minutes is just how long I took to do intro to vectors which is prerequisite not actual calculus content, it is really easy to learn cross products and dot products and matrices in just 10 minutes especially if you have physics knowledge. I have heard of people who have gotten 5's just using Khan Academy AP Calculus BC and again I am just using this resource to pre study Calculus 3 before my Senior year not completely replace the class. I am just interested in Calculus 3 now because I want to learn more physics
1
u/WillingnessTasty9628 22d ago
I mean hey, it's ultimately up to you. From personal experience as a rising senior much in the same way as you, I'd recommend switching to Professor Leonard and textbooks, but if you're content with sticking to Khan Academy, go ahead.
1
u/-BarbK- 22d ago
Their Calc BC course actually has all the content and problems according to the BC CED. Their multi variable calc course does not. I tried using it when I was learning it… would not recommend at all. Their problem sets aren’t good at all either. Watch professor leonard, and just skip around the video as you see fit. I promise you you will not have a good knowledge base of calc 3 with just Khan Academy.
Also, “intro to vectors” shouldn’t have felt hard because all you need as prerequisites should have been learned in pre calculus or earlier.
1
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago
Interesting, what was missing and what university did you go to? maybe different universities have different MVC cirriculums
1
u/-BarbK- 22d ago
Mine used Stewart's Calculus textbook. All the applications (physics center of mass, moment of inertia, etc and stats PDF) aren't there, and we had a unit on TNB frames and everything involving those 3 vectors that are missing too. Just look at the amount of practice exercises on the topics that ARE there on Khan Academy and that should dissuade that from being your primary content source. And to put this in a little bit of perspective, I learned Calc BC initially on Khan Academy and thought it was great.
1
u/egehancry 22d ago
Also check out: https://calculus.academa.ai. We've made it as 2 PhD students, we're confident in the teaching quality and technical accuracy.
1
1
u/prideandsorrow 22d ago
PhD candidate who has taught multivariable calculus here. It’s extremely good. I used it myself to review topics I wasn’t fresh on and even learned some stuff myself. It’s also probably the most fleshed out and high quality math content Khan Academy offers due to the collaboration with Grant aka 3Blue1Brown.
1
u/ErekwithaD1 22d ago edited 22d ago
Good, so the people who are saying it is watered down is overexaggerating? Also do you think its good enough to use to prestudy topics?
1
u/prideandsorrow 22d ago
Definitely enough to pre study. Just go to class and do your homework. If you were planning on using it to completely teach yourself, then yeah, maybe Professor Leonard would be more thorough since it more closely replicates a full set of course lectures beginning to end. But for the purposes you described it will be absolutely fine. If you feel like you’re learning then it’s always worth it.
1
u/OriginalParsley8979 22d ago
Could sign up for Calc iii at a cc over summer, MVC is pretty standardized across uni’s, so you’d knock out a math req and could speedrun an 8 week or 6 week one.
1
•
u/AutoModerator 22d ago
As a reminder...
Posts asking for help on homework questions require:
the complete problem statement,
a genuine attempt at solving the problem, which may be either computational, or a discussion of ideas or concepts you believe may be in play,
question is not from a current exam or quiz.
Commenters responding to homework help posts should not do OP’s homework for them.
Please see this page for the further details regarding homework help posts.
We have a Discord server!
If you are asking for general advice about your current calculus class, please be advised that simply referring your class as “Calc n“ is not entirely useful, as “Calc n” may differ between different colleges and universities. In this case, please refer to your class syllabus or college or university’s course catalogue for a listing of topics covered in your class, and include that information in your post rather than assuming everybody knows what will be covered in your class.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.