Only a few weeks remain in this trimester and then the school year is 2/3 over! This just happened to be a week that zoomed on by for me. The pistons trip in the middle was nice. Not so nice that I had to take the quiz a day early. That was a little tough. I struggle with this whole u-substitution concept. Not that I don't understand it. It's just that I struggle at applying it to its full affect to the problems. Trying to figure out what to use for "u" is the hardest part for me. Once I get that, then I am golden. Anyways, in this week that was shortened by sickness, I gained a great understanding of slope fields. Those were a nice little break from evaluating definite and indefinite integrals. Although, I thought it was weird that when we learned about the slope field section, the majority of problems from that assignment didn't require you to use them. One thing I did notice about slope fields was that once the slope became a large number, it was hard to tell the difference between a slope of 5 or 10. They begin to look very similar. Also it is hard to draw a line for some of the complex equations. I guess that;s probably why they didn't have us use them too much for the assignments because they aren't the most accurate. My participation was really good in class this week. I was able to converse in all the CCC's when I was there and then drawing the slope field on the white board was kind of cool. The bigger the graph is, the easier i think it is to read the slope field. I hope you had a great valentine’s day and I look forward to being back in school healthy on Monday!
Weeks are flying by now... Well, maybe not this one. Our first full week of school was packed with mathematics. We are back onto a more complicated U-substitution than before. The main part I am struggling with in this new chapter is trying to figure out what to use as the u value. Once I am able to figure that out, everything else goes smoothly. I guess I just have to apply myself more and put some more thought into it. It was nice to finish up the test early in the week. It should bring a close to chapter 5. I think I did well on the non-calculator portion, but I did question what approach to take when tackling the problem that asked me to find g values from the graph of a function f(x). I think I was able to figure it out in the end. It seemed like the majority of the questions I got wrong on multiple choice were just careless mistakes. That is kind of frustrating, but also assuring knowing that I understand the main concepts. I will have to continue working hard for this next chapter I think. Once again, I think the required CCC's is a great idea and has helped me kick my procrastination out the door. My participation in class was good this week. I was able to work on problems and pitch ideas when we went over CCC’s rather than just absorbing what others were saying. U-substitution is a method for finding anti-derivatives. I tried looking up who discovered this method and there wasn’t much information about it. I guess that makes it kind of mysterious. That could be a good or bad thing. I like knowing that someone invented it rather than the thought going through my mind that says teachers just thought of it to give their students more work. I am sure that isn’t the case, but hey, the vague history draws some questions…
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