Introductory Course in Mathematics
for new students of the bachelor program Science

Basic information

The aim of this course is primarily to help new students of the bachelor program Science with transition from high school to university, to refresh their high school knowledge of mathematics just before the first semester starts, and maybe even learn a little bit of something new.

In 2023, this course was a concise version of the introductory course for new students of bachelor programs in Czech, see Úvodní kurz z matematiky and my hand-+written notes below.

In 2024 and 2025, several problems in maths and physics were solved and simple demonstrations for selected problems generated by claude.ai were shown (see again the scanned notes and Python demonstrations below) .

This course is optional and it is not necessary to register for it. You can just show up.

If you are interested in any particular topic you would like to hear during the course, let the lecturer know (see Contact at the end).

Lecturer:
Karel Houfek from Institute of Theoretical Physics MFF UK
Time and place:
21-22 September 2026, starting at 9 AM
Lecture room T2 in Campus Troja, MFF UK, V Holešovičkách 2, Prague 8

Click on the map to get to mapy.com.

Time schedule of the course - preliminary

Examples and notes from the year 2026

Hand-written notes with examples of integration in 2D and 3D.

He are prompts and resulting simulations for projectile motion using JavaScript and HTML code generated in 2026:

Examples and notes from the year 2025

For notes on projectile motion see below the year 2024. Moreover, here are notebooks for Jupyter Lab with Pythod codes generated by claude.ai to demonstrate its capibilities and topics we were discussing:

Furthermore, here are my not very clean notes on basics of calculus with some worked examples. For a very nice summary of derivatives and integrals, visit https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/, where you can find more nice summaries from mathematics.

Examples and notes from the year 2024

The first part of my hand-written notes on projectile motion. At the end, there is a not-so-easy problem to solve.

The solution to the last problem: hand-written notes, notebook in Mathematica, and pdf version if you cannot open the Mathematica notebook.

Examples and notes from the year 2023

Here are examples of problems which were explained during the course in 2023.
Summary of formulas for some topics and solutions to all problems above are available as hand-written notes.


By the way, if you are not familiar or confident with mathematical terms, phrases, and pronunciation in English, then you can find useful very nice booklet English for Mathematics by Muhammad Subhan Mukhlis. If the link would not work anymore, please let us know.

Contact

Do not hesitate to contact the lecturer Karel Houfek, email: karel.houfek@matfyz.cuni.cz, if you have any questions or would like discuss some topics further.

K. Houfek, July 2026