Customer Reviews

College Algebra (8th Edition)

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Incomprehensible is the best word I can find for this book. I'm good at math and I can't understand half this book. It's the worst textbook I have ever had to deal with. Obviously college instructors do not read the reviews.

The authors give one poor example for every problem, work through the sections as if the reader already knows all the methods, and introduce new concepts without so much as a definition. It's BAD BAD BAD!

College instructors: If you want to confuse your students and discourage them from taking any more classes in math, choose this book.

I agree with the other reviews - this is a poor book. Examples are terse, not well explained, and often don't apply to the exercises you have to do. College Algebra is an intimidating class for nonmajors (perhaps for majors too), and this book does not help. I'd encourage any professor with a choice not to use this book.

So what to do if it's required, like it was for me? I'd say buy the book used (lots of low priced options currently), and use the savings to hire a good tutor to help explain what the book doesn't. I did this, and it did help a lot. I really only turned to the book to write the problems down, and ignored the rest, because otherwise I got too frustrated.

This book was not written for students. It was written for those already fluent in algebra. Why this was chosen as the textbook for my college algebra course, I will never know.
The explanations are terse, and if the student does not already posess a natural affinity for mathematics, lead to even greater confusion. Vital steps are glossed over as if the author thinks everyone reading the book instantly understands without explanation or example.

I'm currently struggling through this book. I've had to supplement my reading with other textbooks. It is exactly as other reviews have stated - it's like the writers expect you to know the material already and skip any explaination. Avoid this book.

This has to be the most useless math book ever! You would think that by the 8th edition they would have made some changes to enable learning. The only thing that saved me in this class was the great interactive web program (which of course must be purchased separately unless you are buying brand new @ $125.00).

I used to feel that I was fairly good at math. Thanks to this book, I (and the rest of the students in my class) feel like never taking another math class again!!

I am in the midst of taking the third in a succession of algebra courses using this particular series of textbooks. This book, by far, surpasses the others in difficulty of use! Many of the illustrations seem to have little or no bearing upon the problems given and the explanations can be obscure at best. The book is also poorly edited making matters even worse. If you have never before experienced the height of frustration, I would recommend this book as a means of getting there. The sad part is that I really wanted to like algebra and this book has made it almost impossible.