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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Calculus by The University of Sydney

4.8
stars
3,517 ratings

About the Course

The focus and themes of the Introduction to Calculus course address the most important foundations for applications of mathematics in science, engineering and commerce. The course emphasises the key ideas and historical motivation for calculus, while at the same time striking a balance between theory and application, leading to a mastery of key threshold concepts in foundational mathematics. Students taking Introduction to Calculus will: • gain familiarity with key ideas of precalculus, including the manipulation of equations and elementary functions (first two weeks), • develop fluency with the preliminary methodology of tangents and limits, and the definition of a derivative (third week), • develop and practice methods of differential calculus with applications (fourth week), • develop and practice methods of the integral calculus (fifth week)....

Top reviews

JP

Oct 9, 2023

Great course, the professor explains with excellent examples and the exercises really reinforce the material and are challenging. Thank you for offering this great courses from excellent universities.

AF

Apr 8, 2022

An excellent course, especially if like me you had done some calculus in the past and wanted a refresher. David is an excellent, clear, and attentive tutor. I can't recommend him enough. Many thanks.

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151 - 175 of 1,083 Reviews for Introduction to Calculus

By Melinda E

Jan 7, 2020

The instructor and pace is perfect for a refresher course. the material is broken into tolerable chunks of information. You don't have to remember everything at once, just a little at a time. I really like this.

By John F

Jun 2, 2020

excellent review of major concepts. some of it required multiple viewings, but otherwise, it was fine.

By ZapperonUXVero

Mar 18, 2020

It is a great and efficient introduction to the basics of calculus!

By Bashir A

Oct 20, 2021

A fantastic course. It helped me to self-study calculus.

By Euan B

Jan 17, 2021

Well constructed with useful information and a good lecturer. Was very fast paced however, and struggled grasping key concepts that were important to deeply understand before moving on to future topics due to the overall speed of the course. In summary, a good course.

By Yash K S

Mar 21, 2021

Every point is cleared by instructor in lectures. Good learning and content is very clear and understable......

thank you......

By Iekaa G T

Aug 18, 2020

I had a hard time understanding some lectures and the exercises were a bit tough.

By RAJESH K C

Sep 15, 2020

Many Quiz Question are not completely given.

By Ksenia M

Jun 2, 2022

Personally didn't like the course due to the format of explanation - the person who explains the simplest concepts formulates the explanation in a fairly lengthy way. I'd rather to find some textbook and go that way than listening to stretched lectures like that.

By Andreas W

Dec 17, 2023

Dear David, I am impressed by the progression of the learning content in this course. The deductive mediation of the content in the videos is perfectly interlinked with the worksheets, exercises and final quizzes. At no point, the explanations skipped a piece of knowledge without which the content could not be understood - remarkable! The graphics of the videos were pleasant, and the cuts were (almost always) well-paced. I cherish the handwritten and personal style very much and countless colored visualizations helped me along the way. The instructor also replied personally to my contributions/questions in the discussion forum. Thank you. It took me five months to complete the course, during which I usually worked all seven days of the week. Overall, I would estimate my personal time count to be 240 hours. In it I include the time that I spent on the repetition and creation of my own notes and also the time necessary to revisit faulty exercises and quizzes a second, third, ..., n-th ( ;-) time. As an improvement, I would like the percentage of the course to establish itself in processing the practice quizzes. It is very frustrating to not even make one percent "progress" after hours of work. Overall, I feel well-prepared for my next endeavors. This course leaves me stunned, curious and above all: grateful. I wish you all the best, Andreas

By Susana P

May 10, 2023

I had not taken a math course in almost 20 years. The explanations are great and clear, I found the animations in the videos useful to make concepts and algebraic manipulations clearer. The notes for each lesson also helped me to understand the concepts at a deeper level. This course requires many hours of hard work to solve the problems and pass the quizzes, and I could feel my abilities growing increasingly. I feel ready to take more advanced math courses and I end this course with a very good understanding of the basic principles. The professor is great! Very encouraging and passionate about math. I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to learn Calculus, it's a gentle introduction. Be patient with yourself if you haven't learned math in a long time. You can do it!

By Abdelerahmane K

Jul 26, 2023

One of the best courses i took on the platform, too many good things can't mention them all, but the methodology used in this course is perfect: in each section, he gives u an introduction from the real world so u get the value of the thing u r gonna study now, then proofs whith u the basic rules of the concept, then walk through 1-2 long examples, and keeps the rest in the amazing notes. This way was more than awsome to understand each and any concept in all the lectures, i am curently ahd my licence diplome in Computer Sceince and studied calculus 1-2 in the 1st year but still got ton of information from this course that i didn't get from 2 semesters of calculus in my university.

By Daniel S

Feb 2, 2023

I have gone through Calculus 1 and 2 at university many years ago, and wanted a refresher. What I got was much more: a new perspective on the material with a sense of discovery I had never experienced before. Professor Easdown has organized and presented this at times challenging topic with great clarity, eloquence, and enthusiasm. I am now more than caught up on what I once learned, and I look forward to continuing my personal exploration of this fascinating and very useful branch of mathematics. And should Professor Easdown ever develop other online courses, I certainly wouldn't hesitate to enroll.

By 黄金

Mar 19, 2022

Coursera上的《Introduction To Calculus》是一门能让人感受到数学之美的课程。她的内容不多,只讲到单变量微积分的换元积分法。但是每一个知识点都是从简单的知识出发,由逻辑推理而来,最后回到应用中去。而我在学习其他数学课的时候,往往需要先记住一堆莫名其妙的公式,这多少让我感到不适。

课程一开始就把代数和几何联系在一起,用几何图形来理解代数概念。第一个模块讲数,自然数、有理数、实数等等,这是多么简单的知识,一开始我觉得很无聊,但是教授用“数轴”把各种数联系在一起,又让我觉得挺有趣。美妙的事物总是从简单开始,从几何的角度上看,函数就是曲线,导数就是曲线的切线,积分就是曲线下的面积。从代数的角度看,曲线、切线、面积都是函数,它们通过微积分联系在一起。

几何能帮助我们理解代数,代数能帮助我们走得更远。比如面积的积分是体积,体积的积分是什么?曲线的导数是切线,切线的导数又是什么?我们很难通过几何把它们想象出来,但是对代数而言,它们都是函数。

这门课会讲到高斯分布,它是概率论的基础知识。这门课也会讲到logistic function,它会用于机器学习的梯度下降,把特征值缩放到0-1区间。这门课也会讲到如何计算宇宙第一速度,你会发现牛顿当年的发现其实也没什么“了不起”的嘛。

By Aaradhya S

Jun 12, 2021

This is the most brilliant course of introductory calculus , professor David teachs in such a succinct way that you will feel very comfortable with new concepts very early on and will acquire fluency relatively fast . The modules are very well designed and the teaching method is outstanding . I would wholly recommend it to anyone who would like to learn true mathematics in its true context , not only learning formulas and their mechanical implementation. I thank University of of Sydney and Professor Easdown for this excellent course.

By Connie F

Jun 22, 2022

This course was perfect for my review of my undergraduate Calculus (30 years ago). I am a high school math teacher who needed to review in order to teach Calculus to my students. This course took me the full 5 weeks to complete. I worked between 3 and 5 days a week. Some days I spent 4 hours working through. However, I worked every example problem on my own first, taking lots of time reading prior to watching the lesson videos. I feel like I have had a very thorough review and look forward to teaching my students Calculus!

By nebi

Aug 31, 2023

I really enjoyed this course. I think the course has a very good balance between video and exercises. The quiz after each video asks you to read and digest the notes to answer the questions and allows you to review step by step the demonstration discussed in the video clip. I also enjoyed the historical references and the video are well done. I will need more exercises to completely digest and master what have been seen in this course, but there are other universities offering this kind of courses (such as TU Delft)

By Russell L M

Jul 16, 2022

This was a very well taught course by an enthusiastic professor who genuinely cared about his students' grasp of the material. I found the 'reading notes' to be especially useful for review and complete understanding of the concepts. Unlike the discussion forums in other courses, this one was very active with the professor and his assistants immediately answering learners' questions. I highly recommend this course to everyone who might want to learn about the basics of Calculus.

By Miguel A J A

Sep 19, 2021

Buenas tardes, en lo personal el curso me parece muy interesante, me hizo pensar, recordar y repasar. Lo único que se me dificulto es que toda la información esta en ingles, y me tardaba en traducir y entender. pero a parte de esto todo el curso muy interesante.

Pregunta. como puedo obtener el Certificado del curso, porque al iniciar no lo pague, ojala y pudiera pagar para que me envíen el certificado. gracias. saludos

Miguel Angel Juárez Aguilar

Tepatepec, Estado de Hidalgo. México

By James & M B

Sep 14, 2023

I always wanted to learn Calculus. I am retired and 86 years old. It was not easy, but with persistence I completed the course. The lectures and notes were very instructive and research via google was a great help. Thanks so much for the patience as I am quite busy with other responsibilities. But now it is done and I am very pleased and satisfied. Once again, thank you to your support and the lecturer for his inputs and notes.

James Buske

Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa

By Ruben C

Mar 11, 2023

One of the best introductions to more interesting mathematics, explained well and worth the hours to understand. Integral calculus obviously missing a lot of stuff but for an introduction it explains and allow you to understand the basis well. Very polished and high quality with a different song for each week and lots of drawings and examples -including famous historic mathematicians- which allow you to visualise/understand the content in a more interesting and detailed way.

By Dylan B

Feb 3, 2022

The best course I have been a part of. Professor Easdown presents this interesting subject like a story for the you to discover. This is not a course to be rushed. If you take your time and allow your head to wrap around each of his lectures, you will be able to solve the problems presented by knowing what you need and why it works.

The course has relit my passion for mathematics.

Thank you very much, and I really look forward to seeing the next course of yours soon!

By Gabriel M

Jun 24, 2021

Instructor David Easdown is amazing! He makes math... fun (insert surprised face emoji) and gives real-world examples of everything that is taught in this course. There are times that he goes a little fast but everything is explained in the notes that accompany every lesson if you need to slow down and review the material. I plan on using the skills I learned (differentiation and integration) in future engineering and circuit analysis courses.

By Phat-Duy T

Feb 12, 2023

This is a truly great course for Calculus review. I really enjoy the course with easy to understand lectures and detailed notes with simple language for non-native English speakers to understand. I hope that University of Sydney and Associate Professor David Easdown would provide more intermediate and advanced level of calculus courses for us to understand deeper about the subject, especially for me as a student major on economics.

By Kevin K

Jun 26, 2023

The University of Sydney's Introduction to Calculus MOOC was very well organized. The video presentations were clearly well-rehearsed as they flowed smoothly and error-free. The instructor provided written notes (in .pdf format) that complemented the video lessons and were immensely helpful. The instructor's energy and enthusiasm made the topics interesting. The instructor promptly responded to discussion forum questions.