So, I'm pretty confident I can learn calculus in two weeks. Basically, all I need is somewhere that will tell me what to do and how to do it without much examples/explanation. I'm wondering if anyone knows of any good places to look to learn, preferably online resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_calculus

Wiki's calculus page gives a good Earth-from-space overview, and its topic-specific pages cover a lot of the material, but there's only the vaguest of hints of the order in which things go. It's still far better than Mathworld's page, though.

Wikisource does have a 99-year-old calculus text that looks promising. Wikibooks's calculus looks comparable for the early stuff, but falls into mathese in the multivariable stuff (typically calculus 3).

My recommendation, then, would be to work off of both of the sources in the preceding paragraph, with topic-specific wiki pages (or our very own Knowledge Base) filling in any gaps.


That page actually isn't very helpful; it looks like a list of chapter titles from a calculus text. The "Topics in Calculus" sidebar gives a far better ordering than the main content of the page.

Concentrate on the theory behind calculus and DO NOT skip on the proofs. Once you understand the fundamental theorem of calculus everything under it falls into place. Calculus, like many other areas of math, is a large amount of memorization, and an even larger amount of understanding what you're memorizing.

Well, I already know most basic stuff for differentiation and integration (most of calc 1). So, I'm not necessarily looking for an overview of calculus, but something that I could use to study all the stuff I don't already know. Fill in the gaps/gaping holes. The wikibooks and wikisource articles look good. I wouldn't mind delving into a bit of calc 3.

In my opinion, Calc 3 is really simple. Once you have Calc 1 and 2 down, as well as an understanding of Linear Algebra concepts, I'd say you could learn it pretty quickly, if you aren't treated as an idiot.

I've found that reading the calculus textbook I was given as part of my AP Calc class is extremely useful. More useful than the teacher. I don't do the homework, I don't listen to the lessons (You probably shouldn't follow my example, but...), but when it comes for test time, I have pretty much perfect accuracy. It's pretty intuitive, once you understand what you're doing.

Also, YouTube is great for this stuff.

You are right; every chapter I read over and over again to understand it. (I am still learning)

A conceptual understanding could definitely come that quickly, but I think you would have a hard time solving any real problems. Plus, once you get up to stuff like calculus of variations you won't have a solid foundation of understanding.

I recommend Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences by Mary L Boas as the most practical math textbook I've read. (get it cheap used~$20)

It could take you an hour to learn how to use a saw, hammer, and tape measure. But building a house could take a lifetime.

Ya calculus is pretty difficult than other topics but there are many websites available online from where you can take reference and in my opinion hard copy is the best option and for that you can refer to Dr.R.D>Sharma's latest edition.