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Calculus 3 (multivariable calculus), part 1 of 2 (Udemy.com)

Towards and through the vector fields, part 1 of 2: Functions of several real variables and vector-valued functions

Created by: Hania Uscka-Wehlou

Last updated August 2026

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What you will learn

  • How to solve problems in multivariable calculus (illustrated with more than 200 solved problems) and why these methods work.
  • Parameterize some curves (straight lines, circles, ellipses, graphs of functions of one variable, intersections of two surfaces).
  • Describe position, velocity, speed and acceleration; compute arc length of parametric curves; arc length parametrization.
  • Limits, continuity and differentiability for functions of several variables. Theory, geometric intuitions, and lots of problem solving.
  • Several variants of the Chain Rule, involving different kinds functions. You will also learn how to apply these variants of the Chain Rule for problem solving.
  • Several variants of the Implicit Function Theorem, with various geometrical interpretations; problem solving.
  • Optimization of functions of several variables, both on open domains and on compact domains (Lagrange multipliers on the boundary, etc.).

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Course Description

Calculus 3 (multivariable calculus), part 1 of 2

Towards and through the vector fields, part 1 of 2


[None of our courses are produced using AI; they are all real-human products.]


(Chapter numbers in Robert A. Adams, Christopher Essex: Calculus, a complete course. 8th or 9th edition.)


C0: Introduction to the course; preliminaries (Chapter 10: very briefly; most of the chapter belongs to prerequisites)


S1. About the course

S2. Analytical geometry in R^n (n = 2 and n = 3): points, position vectors, lines and planes, distance between points (Ch.10.1)

S3. Conic sections (circle, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola)

S4. Quadric surfaces (spheres, cylinders, cones, ellipsoids, paraboloids etc) (Ch.10.5)

S5. Topology in R^n: distance, open ball, neighbourhood, open and closed set, inner and outer point, boundary point (Ch.10.1)

S6. Coordinates: Cartesian, polar, cylindrical, spherical coordinates (Ch.10.6)

You will learn: to understand which geometrical objects are represented by simpler equations and inequalities in R^2 and R^3, determine whether a set is open or closed, if a point is an inner, outer or boundary point, determine the boundary points, describe points and other geometrical objects in the different coordinate systems.


C1: Vector-valued functions, parametric curves (Chapter 11: 11.1, 11.3)


S7. Introduction to vector-valued functions

S8. Some examples of parametrisation

S9. Vector-valued calculus; curve: continuous, differentiable and smooth

S10. Arc length

S11. Arc length parametrisation

You will learn: Parametrise some curves (straight lines, circles, ellipses, graphs of functions of one variable);

if r(t) = (x(t), y(t), z(t)) is a function describing a particle’s position in R^3 with respect to time t, describe position, velocity, speed and acceleration; compute arc length of parametric curves, arc length parametrisation.


C2: Functions of several variables; differentiability (Chapter 12)


S12. Real-valued functions in multiple variables, domain, range, graph surface, level curves, level surfaces
You will learn: describe the domain and range of a function, Illustrate a function f(x,y) with a surface graph or with level curves.

S13. Limit, continuity
You will learn: calculate limit values, determine if a function has limit value or is continuous at one point, use common sum-, product-, ... rules for limits.

S14. Partial derivative, tangent plane, normal line, gradient, Jacobian
You will learn: calculate first-order partial derivatives, compute scalar products (two formulas) and cross pro- duct, give formulas for normals and tangent planes; understand functions from R^n to R^m, gradients and Jacobians.

S15. Higher partial derivates
You will learn: compute higher order partial derivatives, use Schwarz’ theorem. Solve and verify some simple PDE's.

S16. Chain rule: different versions
You will learn: calculate the chain rule using dependency diagrams and matrix multiplication.

S17. Linear approximation, linearisation, differentiability, differential
You will learn: determine if a function is differentiable in a point, linearisation of a real-valued function, use linearisation to derive an approximate value of a function, use the test for differentiability (continuous partial derivatives), and properties of differentiable functions.

S18. Gradient, directional derivatives
You will learn: calculate the gradient, find the direction derivative in a certain direction, properties of gradients, understand the geometric interpretation of the directional derivative, give a formula for the tangent and normal lines to a level curve.

S19. Implicit functions
You will learn: calculate the Jacobian determinant, derive partial derivatives with dependent and free variables of implicit functions.

S20. Taylor's formula, Taylor's polynomial
You will learn: derive Taylor's polynomials and Taylor's formula. Understand quadratic forms and learn how to determine if they are positive definite, negative definite, or indefinite.


C3: Optimisation of functions of several variables (Chapter 13: 13.1–3)


S21. Optimisation on open domains (critical points)

S22. Optimisation on compact domains

S23. Lagrange multipliers (optimisation with constraints)

You will learn: classify critical points: local max and min, saddle points; find max and min values for a given function and region; use Lagrange multipliers with one or more conditions.


Make sure that you check with your professor what parts of the course you will need for your midterms. Such things vary from country to country, from university to university, and they can even vary from year to year at the same university.


A detailed description of the content of the course, with all the 255 videos and their titles, and with the texts of all the 216 problems solved during this course, is presented in the resource file "001 Outline_Calculus3.pdf" under Video 1 ("Introduction to the course"). This content is also presented in Video 1.


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Instructor Details

Hania Uscka-Wehlou

I am a multilingual mathematician with a passion for mathematics education. I always try to find the simplest possible explanations for mathematical concepts and theories, with illustrations whenever possible, and with geometrical motivations.

I worked as a senior lecturer in mathematics at Uppsala University (from August 2017 to August 2019) and at Mälardalen University (from August 2019 to May 2021) in Sweden, but I terminated my permanent employment to be able to create courses for Udemy full-time.

I am originally from Poland where I studied theoretical mathematics and got pedagogical qualifications at the Copernicus University in Toruń (1992-1997). Before that, I enjoyed a very rigorous mathematical education in a mathematical class in high school "Liceum IV" in Toruń, which gave me a very solid foundation for everything else I have learned and taught later.

In my courses I teach various branches of university mathematics that I have learned from absolutely excellent lectures of my dear professors from Toruń: Mirosław Uscki (b.1946), Zbigniew Bobiński (b.1940), Paweł Jarek (1933-2013), and Stanisław Balcerzyk (1932-2005).

My PhD thesis (2009) was at Uppsala University in Sweden, with the title: "Digital Lines, Sturmian Words, and Continued Fractions".

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Reviews

4.8

444 ratings on Udemy

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By Francisco Ortega on 5/16/2026

What can I say the value of this course it is not only contained in the material, I have learned a lot from Hania's courses, simply the careful of developing of the subject is outstanding. Here in this course many of the topics seen in calc 1 and 2 with some features of linear algebra really start making more practical sense. With help of these previous background the problems of surfaces and level curves become richer and less difficult to grasp.

By Nathan Bradley on 1/2/2026

I've found that even when I understand the theory and KNOW how to solve the problems (or think I do), I STILL benefit from watching the solutions, because there's often some clever algebraic trick that I wouldn't have thought of, or would have taken me a long time to realize. Thank you for making these videos and taking the time to work through the examples to solidify the theory. I'm such a nerd, I binge your math videos instead of Netflix!

By Mandeep Mangat on 4/8/2025

I tried understanding the meaning of the parametrisation by arc length in the video but the example of the rubber band did not help. I was able to understand it more in one of the the youtube videos where they used an example of travelling certain distance in miles (or any other unit) or time taken to travel the same distance. It made more sense to know that the speed has to be same. But there are other videos where your explanation helped me understanding the concept better. Thanks for the hard work.

By Anonymized User on 6/29/2024

Overall an amazing course, definitely would recommend it to anyone trying to learn multi variable calculus such as myself. Very well structured, and self studying multivariable calculus was made so much easier with this course as this was my first transition from khan academy to Udemy, being 15yrs old and being done all the prerequisites to this course coming in to it was outstanding. Cannot say much more, just simply amazing! P.S this is on my dad's business account.

By Luís Gonçalves on 10/11/2023

It's an excellent course and one that, in my opinion, is at the top of its field. It is structured in a very professional, exhaustive way and at the same time is presented in a very pleasant way. The course offers everything; very explicit and explanatory theoretical presentation, very enlightening examples and presented in a detailed way. All of this is accompanied by pdfs of the presentation slides and notes on how to solve the exercises. It was a great pleasure for me to revisit these subjects, in this way, more than 40 years after my first encounter with them. It is undoubtedly the best course I have attended both electronically and in person to date. I therefore intend to use the author's various courses in my cycle of refreshing my knowledge of mathematics.

By Omar Saber on 6/1/2023

In the beginning of the course, i found that there was a lake of explanation and illustation of fundamental bases of linear algebra and all thier uses in multivariable calculus and how the link was made between two branches of mathwhich is a crucial point to well-understanding the multivariable functions, and in this part of course i would rpopose the first two chapters of vector calculus book for Susan Colley. But for the rest of what i have finished, i found the course is quite detailles and the instructor gives alot of example and uses all means like online software to illustrate shaps and figures. For me, one of the most and well-explained aprt of this this course was the module of Quadric surfaces

By Daniel Stein on 8/3/2022

There are at least a couple of other multi-variable calculus courses at Udemy, but this one promises to be thorough and enriching. A couple of other courses I sampled consisted of perfunctory solutions of very simple exercises and no theory, and they are sadly diminished in comparison to this one, obviously a labor of love on the part of the instructor.

By Murat Furkan on 12/27/2021

Great course with very thorough explanations and proofs. I was lacking lots of fundamental concepts about Calc 3, which is very important for many more advanced topics, like machine learning, optimization, signals and systems, etc. and now I feel more confident. Professor Hania is very kind, knowledgeable and answers every question. I took all of her courses, and look forward to her future lectures.

By Wanda Woźnica on 8/25/2020

This course introduces a variety of topics in Calculus. The total number and duration of the lectures is impressive and everybody can find the knowledge they were looking for, but watching such a huge amount of lectures takes a lot of time, which is a drawback for impatient students. Luckily, there is a detailed list of all the topics and problems which can help you cherry pick for exactly what you need. Moreover, the course in not expensive, and you really get value for your money. Lectures (by a real university teacher) are taught in beautiful and clear English, with perfect illustrations in presentations. You get to see a lot of digital means in the teaching: surfaces in 3D change their shape with change of parameters x, y and z; formulas are perfectly explained and problems are solved by the teacher in her own handwriting, which gives you almost a classroom experience. I have completed the course and I highly recommend it to all who want to study Calculus 3. The second part of Calculus 3 is even better! I have also completed Calculus 1 and 2 by these instructors.

By Richard Bonner on 8/20/2020

No, I was not taking this course. I have been teaching introductory several real variables many times and to varying audience, and it then only is natural to want to know how others do it. The subject is necessarily technical, so one either may hide the details by quickly getting abstract, or else must handle the technicalities directly, a formidable task. Hania is doing the latter, and she is doing it thoroughly. Nothing is swept under the carpet. There is a wealth of examples and graphical illustrations. The prerequisites are largely explained too, slowly and methodically. The student is left no choice but to follow, step by step, learning complicated things without even noticing. Well done, Hania!

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Overall Score : 96 / 100