Calculus for Fun and Profit

Basic management and basic accounting are recommended as the first courses of the program.  This seems to establish their place as the foundations of business learning.  Practically every other beginning course requires one of these, or calculus, as a prerequisite.  The other courses that are required for completion within the first few academic quarters are statistics and microeconomics, which have calculus as a prerequisite.  

I wasn't a natural science major, nor have I taken a calculus course in the last decade, as required (well, ever… I did science classes like biology and acoustics in college, with specific mathematic applications that I learned as I went).  This gives me the opportunity to take calculus as my first math class since high school.  Wheeeee, fun.

I'm saving money, and potentially helping out my program GPA, by taking a distance learning calculus course.  I have to take one that is approved by SCU's MBA program.  Taking calculus outside the program also means that if I max out my program credits before graduation, I will have taken a different class that is more specific to business than a prerequisite math class.  If you must take calculus as a pre-program requirement or as a prerequisite for a class, your academic counseling office should provide you with a list of approved calculus courses in the area. 

It was hard, before actually starting the course, to assess my personal preference (need?) for real vs. virtual class time.  I am doing all right communicating with the teacher, and handing in homework by fax and e-mail. It would obviously be much easier, though, to tackle difficult concepts with a group, in an actual classroom, with a patient teacher at the whiteboard.   It might also have made me miserable, if my difficulties were consistently fewer and/or different from my classmates'.

I recommend that you do a little research on the texts for potential courses.  I like the choice I made, mostly because of the relatively inexpensive cost, and the opportunity to go at my own pace.  Still, I have seen one of the texts from SCU's MBA calculus course, and it seems to be simpler than mine.  The text used by the MBA program is more application focused (no surprise).   The text for my class is for more hardcore mathematicians.  It feels like I'm rewiring my brain to understand fundamental and difficult symbolic concepts.  I'm learning how to prove theorems instead of just apply them.  "It's good for me", I tell myself, partly wishing that I could just memorize complex quantitative methods for specific real world applications.