During the Spring 2020 term, Calculus II is coordinated by Prof. Charmaine Sia (sia@cims.nyu.edu).
Welcome to Calculus II!
“The book of the universe is written in the language of mathematics.” Galileo wrote this four hundred years ago, even before Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus. The statement is as valid today as ever: we use functions in all the sciences, and calculus allows us to analyze functions and draw scientific conclusions.
Calculus II is a second-semester calculus course for students who have previously been introduced to the basic ideas of differential and integral calculus. Over the semester, we will study three (related) topics that form a central part of the language of modern science:
- methods and applications of integration,
- infinite series and the representation of functions by power series, and
- parametric curves in the plane.
The material we take up in this course has applications in physics, chemistry, biology, environmental science, astronomy, economics, statistics, and just about everything else. We want you to leave the course not only with computational ability, but also the ability to use these notions in their natural scientific contexts, and with an appreciation of their mathematical beauty and power.