Pre-Calculus For Dummies

Way better than the last PreCalculus dummies book I got, it actually teaches PreCalculus topics and not basic math. Great refresher for me as I haven’t taken a math classes in over a year and fun to just look at something and relearn without the stressors of being in high school all over again. Going to take math next semester in the fall as a sophomore in college and haven’t taken math since a senior in high school so this will be my own personal summer class and if I get through it somewhat quick if I don’t think I need a ton of help, I bought the Calculus book as well so that’s help a ton too for when I get into PreCalc or Calc 1 in the fall.

Son that 16 uses it, says it helps. Easy to understand.

It is well written, but I’m only on page 89 and I found a couple of disconcerting errors on pages 88 and 89. First they print x=2 when they clearly meant x-2. This confusion with the equal sign is on both sides. Also, for the steps outlined for synthetic division they say add when they should say subtract and multiply 4 when they should multiply by -4. This would align the synthetic division process with the long division process.

Purchased for my son. He’s found it beneficial.

When a friend went back to school, she know that she would have to take calculus. We studied together and discovered that we needed a review of foundation math — advanced algebra, geometry and trig. We found lots of pages on line with questions and even the answers. But explanations were harder to find. This book is arranged by topic and we could easily find the explanation or formula we needed using the index at the back and the list of chapters at the front. It often gives multiple ways to solve an equation.

On the plus side this book provides a comprehensive overview of the the topics needed to begin the study of calculus. But there are three major issues for those trying to learn from this book. First, there are simply too many errors which the publisher and author have not corrected on a webpage. These errors are not simply mistyped words, but mistyped values and variables in a formula or mathematical expression. For example a problem may begin with the value 3x+2 in an exponent, but in the next step, the value has changed to 3x+1. Second, there are no proofs provided. Most rules and formulas are presented simply as things to know without further explanation. This, in itself, is not necessarily a problem as this is not strictly a textbook. But if you wish to develop a good pre-calculus foundation and want to know "why" not just "what", this book is not written for that purpose. Third, there are no practice problems in the book itself. However, there is a companion Pre-Calculus Workbook for Dummies which does provide practice problems and solutions as well as an online resource of additional problems. In summary, if you have previously taken courses on the topics covered in this book and are looking for a refresher of those topics (which is why I bought this book), then I could (with the above qualifications) recommend it. But if you are a beginner trying to learn these topics, this book is not for you.

I like how the author explains concepts. She makes it very digestible and uses useful examples in the book which helped me in my pre-cal class.

My daughter said if her teacher taught like this book she would have been just fine without the book. Essay for her to understand.