Biography

This challenging course is aimed at the independent learners who are comfortable with handling symbolic language and abstract thinking challenges. Students work together in small groups in an effort to discover new concepts and explain new ideas from multiple perspectives. The course is aimed at honing the individual student’s mathematical creativity and providing a broad base of skills prior to taking advanced calculus courses and higher. There is greater emphasis on formal justification and proper notation. Students begin the year by engaging with contest level math problems that address many of the topics from Honors Algebra 2. In addition to extending previously studied topics such as transformations of functions, quadratic maximization, graphing rational functions, and exponential and logarithmic functions, the course includes a thorough introduction to differential calculus, going beyond and deeper into what is covered in the Introductory Calculus course. In addition, the course covers an extension of trigonometry, including trigonometric identities, the Law of Sines and the Law of Cosines, parametric and polar functions and their graphs, an exploration of methods of proof, and a thorough treatment of vectors. This class prepares students for BC Calculus.

Prerequisites: Recommendation of Honors Algebra 2 Teacher