Math 1210, Calculus

Reflection:

Here I am at the end of another semester of math. Assuming things go well with my final in a week or so, I will have added another fairly successful class to my record, as well as my skill set. I feel that calculus is probably the most important subject I’ll take on in the general math series. I’ll be continuing on with math, as I’m an engineering major and math is a very large part of the job. I was thinking about this in particular when we were learning optimization, which seems to me an especially important skill. I’m studying electrical engineering, and optimization is pretty important to the job. Finding the solution which provides the maximum efficiency possible is always desirable. Electricity costs money to generate, and wasting it can be dangerous as well as foolish.

We also learned about limits, an essential concept in many fields. Economics, for example, would be a more or less impossible field of study without limits, as the projected cost of commodities would be inaccessible. Derivatives occupied a large amount of the semester, as they should. Finding derivatives requires the application of numerous situational rules, each of which has to be applied only when the expression calls for it. Recognizing which rule should be used is challenging, even at the end of this class, and I imagine I will be working on those skills well into the next few semesters as I tackle calculus 2 and beyond.

  As for the signature assignment above, I had a good time with it. It’s basically an exercise in derivatives and a real-world application of those derivatives, motion according to a formula, which could apply to anything from a particle as shown to a piece of paper in a wind tunnel or a bicyclist on a hill. A similar process can be used to model the time required for some process, such as an object reaching its zenith before falling or predicting the moment a container will run dry. Taking derivatives, second derivatives, antiderivatives and integrals are irreplaceable skills which I will be using for the rest of my time in school, if not longer as I continue my career.