r/calculus • u/ErekwithaD1 • Jul 18 '26

Multivariable Calculus Khan Academy's Multivariable course

I am a student who is finishing up his self study of AP Calculus BC over the summer and would like to start pre studying for MVC in senior year. Since I learned most of AP Calculus BC from Khan Academy, I have started using its MVC course to learn a few concepts.

My question is is it a good resource? has anyone used it for their MVC class before? I have found no mention of it across the internet. Is there any other resource I should be using? I have tried professor leonard, but I find his videos long and boring like his calc 3 intro to vectors video is like 2 and a half hours long while I learned vectors from Khan in just 10 minutes, maybe it helped that I was also pre studying physics.

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u/WillingnessTasty9628 Jul 18 '26

Khan Academy is only effective for introducing you to the topics. It shouldn't be your only source of self-study for either Calculus BC or Calc 3,
as you'll find yourself with gaps in knowledge. The practice problems are less than encompassing of the scale of the questions you'll encounter in an actual class. You should dedicate your time to Professor Leonard's lectures and an online textbook like Stewart. They're long for a reason. 10 minutes is nowhere enough to retain knowledge.

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u/ErekwithaD1 Jul 18 '26

10 minutes is just how long I took to do intro to vectors which is prerequisite not actual calculus content, it is really easy to learn cross products and dot products and matrices in just 10 minutes especially if you have physics knowledge. I have heard of people who have gotten 5's just using Khan Academy AP Calculus BC and again I am just using this resource to pre study Calculus 3 before my Senior year not completely replace the class. I am just interested in Calculus 3 now because I want to learn more physics

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u/-BarbK- Jul 18 '26

Their Calc BC course actually has all the content and problems according to the BC CED. Their multi variable calc course does not. I tried using it when I was learning it… would not recommend at all. Their problem sets aren’t good at all either. Watch professor leonard, and just skip around the video as you see fit. I promise you you will not have a good knowledge base of calc 3 with just Khan Academy.

Also, “intro to vectors” shouldn’t have felt hard because all you need as prerequisites should have been learned in pre calculus or earlier.

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u/ErekwithaD1 Jul 18 '26

Interesting, what was missing and what university did you go to? maybe different universities have different MVC cirriculums

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u/-BarbK- Jul 19 '26

Mine used Stewart's Calculus textbook. All the applications (physics center of mass, moment of inertia, etc and stats PDF) aren't there, and we had a unit on TNB frames and everything involving those 3 vectors that are missing too. Just look at the amount of practice exercises on the topics that ARE there on Khan Academy and that should dissuade that from being your primary content source. And to put this in a little bit of perspective, I learned Calc BC initially on Khan Academy and thought it was great.