After teaching calculus for 11 years, I started noticing the same patterns again and again, both in what helps students learn and in what tends to hold them back. Here are 9 lessons I wish more students knew earlier: If I had to compress all 9 into one idea, it would be this: calculus becomes…

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When I was studying physics, I used to mix up the gradient, divergence, and Laplacian all the time. Part of the problem was notation: the gradient and divergence use ∇, while in mathematics the Laplacian is often written as Δ (even though this is the same as ∇ squared). I could use the formulas, but…

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