CALCULUS

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

John Losse taught mathematics and calculus in particular over a long career beginning at Government Secondary School in Katsina, Nigeria and continuing until recently at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona. He has assisted Scottsdale area high schools with their AP* Calculus programs since 1991.

John holds an MS in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has been active in applications of technology to mathematics teaching, including graphing calculators, the CBL, and computer algebra systems. He has served as a reader of the AP* Calculus exam since 2000 and has conducted workshops and institutes for AP* teachers for eleven years. This will be his seventh year at the Phoenix Desert AP* Summer Institute.

All major topics of the AB curriculum will be addressed, along with examples showing how these topics have been tested on recent exams. These topics include:

Limits and continuity

End behavior, asymptotic behavior and unbounded behavior

The derivative, its meaning and its applications

Local linearity and concavity

Reimann sums and the definite integral and their applications; the definite integral as an accumulator

The antiderivative and techniques of antidifferentiation

The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus

Techniques of Integration

Differential equations, including separation of variables and slope fields

The excellent computer facilities of Pinnacle High School and Ironwood Ridge High School will be used to demonstrate the latest calculus software. Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences and if possible demonstrate techniques, lessons and software, etc, which they have used successfully themselves.

The 2012 exam will be discussed in detail via a "mock reading" so participants can understand the scoring process.