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Harvard University

Calculus Applied!

Harvard University via edX

Overview

In this course, we go beyond the calculus textbook, working with practitioners in social, life and physical sciences to understand how calculus and mathematical models play a role in their work.

Through a series of case studies, you’ll learn:

  • How standardized test makers use functions to analyze the difficulty of test questions;
  • How economists model interaction of price and demand using rates of change, in a historical case of subway ridership;
  • How an x-ray is different from a CT-scan, and what this has to do with integrals;
  • How biologists use differential equation models to predict when populations will experience dramatic changes, such as extinction or outbreaks;
  • How the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model was created to answer a biological puzzle;
  • How statisticians use functions to model data, like income distributions, and how integrals measure chance;
  • How Einstein’s Energy Equation, E=mc2 is an approximation to a more complicated equation.

With real practitioners as your guide, you’ll explore these situations in a hands-on way: looking at data and graphs, writing equations, doing calculus computations, and making educated guesses and predictions.

This course provides a unique supplement to a course in single-variable calculus. Key topics include application of derivatives, integrals and differential equations, mathematical models and parameters.

This course is for anyone who has completed or is currently taking a single-variable calculus course (differential and integral), at the high school (AP or IB) or college/university level. You will need to be familiar with the basics of derivatives, integrals, and differential equations, as well as functions involving polynomials, exponentials, and logarithms.

This is a course to learn applications of calculus to other fields, and NOT a course to learn the basics of calculus. Whether you’re a student who has just finished an introductory Calculus course or a teacher looking for more authentic examples for your classroom, there is something for you to learn here, and we hope you’ll join us!

Taught by

John Wesley Cain and Juliana Belding

Reviews

4.5 rating, based on 2 Class Central reviews

4.8 rating at edX based on 13 ratings

Start your review of Calculus Applied!

  • Mouath Jamal Mohammad Yacoub
    Education and Behavioral Sciences from Hashimsit University as electrical engineering . is to show "that the writer has studied existing work in the field with insight." It is not enough merely to show what others in your field have discovered. You need to view the work of others with insight, to review it critically.
  • I am taking this course to help me advance in my career. I am Nii Nettey from Ghana and this my first time taking an online course

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