Course Information#

Pre-Calculus Honors Accelerated (PCHA)
2022-23
Dr. Kessner
Marlborough School, Los Angeles

Pre-Calculus Honors Accelerated (PCHA) is a fast-moving course, and we will cover a wide variety of interesting topics on the way to calculus, the development of which was a major milestone in human understanding of the universe.

As we visit these topics, we will also do some coding to aid our understanding of these mathematical concepts, to see some of the relationships between mathematics and computer science, and to have fun and enjoy our mathematical skills.

Grading#

  • 50% group work

  • 50% individual assessments

Reassessment Policy#

Reassessments will be available on a case-by-case basis. You will need to submit test corrections for the original test, and the recorded score will be a 70/30% weighted average of your new/old scores.

Homework#

You are not required to do every assigned homework problem. However, you are responsible for knowing how to do every problem. In other words, don’t waste your time on things you already know how to do, and spend time on the material where you need the most practice. If you skip problems, please make a note on your homework that you’ve skipped them (this is for you, not for me). I highly encourage you to write notes to yourself on your homework to remind yourself what to look out for as you prepare for assessments.

About the course#

This is a fast-paced course, with a lot of material to cover to prepare you for AP Calculus BC next year. Because of the amount of material, we won’t always have time to do an example for every type of problem, and we might not get to discuss every homework problem in class. This puts more responsibility on you to make sure that you understand the material and that you are prepared for the next lesson. This class will be challenging, but I am here to help you. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions at all.

The benefit of moving so quickly in this course is that we will have the opportunity to think about a large variety of interesting ideas in mathematics. In addition, we will do some coding in Python and/or Javascript to explore some topics and have some fun with the ideas we discuss in class.