>>11280096Read Lang's Basic Mathematics or possibly more efficient use Paul's Online Math Notes, Khan Academy and Professor Leonard's lectures on intermediate algebra and precalc to get up to speed. In truth Pre-Calculus is not a real subject in any meaningful sense, its a loosely associated group of unformalized techniques like graphing, basic analysis of functions, algebra, trigonometry and random results from geometry that are thrown together all of which can be mastered in about a month by anyone who would be intelligent enough to do Calculus. At all costs avoid using a large pre-calc textbook, you will not use most of what is in those things. What would be absolutely vital for calc is understanding elementary functions, composite functions, how to interpret a graph, trigonometric identities and the basic slope intercept form of a linear function, especially interpreting what slope should imply analytically. Calc 1 starts with relating average rates of change with the possibility of finding an instantaneous rate of change, usually this segues into demonstrating how a limit can be used to contract a secant line along a graph until we have a tangent line which is the slope of the function at a single value the function takes on. They'll go over things like continuity, which you might develop intuition for from precalculus but in all honesty you probably will never think too deeply about on your own until its made apparent for you. The rules of differentiation are very simple if you know how polynomials and the exponential, logarithmic and trigonometric functions work. Optimization is a bit tricky for some people, but its not well taught in precalc books and without calc you sort of fly blind and learn very little. The other tricky topics are implicit differentiation but that is something you will get the hang of in time, and then related rates problems. All Calc texts review precalculus if you're worried about it.
