Getting Help

Here are links to some of the resources available for help in this course.

• Office hours. Remember that you don't need to make an appointment to attend office hours; just show up!
• CA problem sessions. Go to as many as you like!
• Math Question Center. Go to get help from a CA or to find other students with whom to work.
• The Bureau of Study Counsel offers peer tutoring as well as a number of useful workshops and other services.

Background Review

If you're feeling rusty with Math 1a material or with precalculus, it's a good idea to do some review. For Math 1b, it's important to have a good understanding of the derivative (what it is, the limit definition, how to interpret it, how to compute it) as well as basic knowledge of integration (What is a definite integral? An indefinite integral? A Riemann sum? What does the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus tell us?) We also expect you to have a solid foundation in precalculus. Below are some resources for review:

• The Math 1a textbook is Single Variable Calculus: Concepts & Contexts by James Stewart, but any calculus textbook should be fine for reviewing Math 1a material such as the derivative and the integral.

• The Math Warm-Up Series is a series of videos in which members of the Harvard Math Department review topics such as algebra, trigonometry, and calculus.

• "Calculus in 20 Minutes" is a fast and fun video review of calculus by Ed Burger, a mathematician and excellent teacher from Williams College. To see it, go here and click the "play now" button on the left.

• For precalculus review, one book we recommend is Schaum's Outline of Precalculus, which is on reserve in Cabot Library.

• Another way to get a good review of precalculus is to use ALEKS, an online assessment and learning system. ALEKS will first give you an assessment to determine what you know, and then it will prepare learning modules for you to refresh topics you need more practice with. The cost of ALEKS is $30 for 6 weeks of unlimited use. This information sheet explains how to sign up and use ALEKS.

Review on Specific Topics

Here are some practice problems for reviewing specific topics:

• Graphing - Here are some practice problems. If you're stuck on any of them, try looking at these hints first, before you look at the answers.

• Exponentials - interactive practice problems (click "Guest Login" to access them). You may also want to review Gottlieb 9.2.

• Limits - interactive practice problems (click "Guest Login" to access them)

• Limit Practice for Series - interactive practice problems (click "Guest Login" to access them)

Interactive practice problems

We've put some practice problems online using an interactive system called WeBWorK. This system will check your answers and let you know if they are right or wrong.

To use WeBWorK, just go here and click the "Guest Login" button at the bottom.