Customer Reviews

Algebra 1 (California Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off, I am a tutor to many Algebra 1 students, including some who take algebra with me for h.s. credit in lieu of taking it at school. I am very familiar w/myriad algebra texts.

This book is a jazzier version of the 1994 publishing by Stanley Smith under the Addison Wesley label (owned by the same publishing house as Prentice Hall). I wrote in my review of the 1994 book that my only suggestion would be to take out Chapters 14 & 15 on probability and trig, as they don't really belong in an Alg 1 book. Coincidentally, this book has done exactly that. Hooray!

The font, colors, typography, and imagery are more eye-catching than the bland 1994 book, and there are fewer problems of the purely "drill, drill" variety. They've replaced some of those problems with more challenging application problems toward the end of each assignment, but there are still sufficient problems for assigning many practice & drill problems. In fact, most of the problems are exactly the same as in the 1994 text.

Overall, it's a nice improvement over the older text. They made it more visually and otherwise interesting *without* sacrificing content, as so many algebra texts do. This alone sets it apart from the majority of US-published algebra texts out there. (I tend to agree with a former teacher of mine when he said that, in his experience, the quality of a text is inversely proportional to the number of pretty pictures in it.) :-)

I will continue to refer my students to algebra texts authored by Stanley Smith.

Great book to review or improve algebra for high school. Covers all important concepts. Great for anyone having trouble learning the basics.

This book was in perfect condition. I was able to buy it for a student that didn't have an Algebra book. It arrived very quickly, and his mom (not so much the student) was thrilled.

I bought this book so my daughter could keep one at the sitter's house so she didn't have to carry it in her backpack. The condition in which it arrived was poorer than how it had been listed. I contacted Amazon and the seller and they were very gracious and worked with me to make sure I was happy with the transaction. I highly recommend using this process for buying used books!

it was exactly what i order, it arrive fast and I'm very happy with it. I highly recomend it, when needing certain text books.