College Algebra [IMPORT] (Hardcover)

by Richard C Aufmann (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Academic); Solution M edition (May 28, 1997)
• ISBN-10: 0395834775
• ISBN-13: 978-0395834770
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,969,908 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best text I've ever seen in 10 years of teaching!, October 28, 1999

By	Jeremy L. Carr (Pensacola, FL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: College Algebra (Hardcover)

Aufmann's text is excellent. The problems are clearly organized and worked in detail. Aufmann really makes a serious effort to help the students understand the material. His applied problems are very interesting and the illustrations and helpful and numerous. I learned algebra from an old text by Dolciani, and I think Aufmann's book is much better. If I were learning algebra for the first time today, I would hope that my instructors would choose Aufmann's book rather than any of the other sorry excuses for algebra textbooks that are available today. Trust me when I say: ALL ALGEBRA TEXTBOOKS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL. AUFMANN RULES! and if you give the text half a chance, you will be able to learn algebra from it.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars ".....you're going to need a different book!!, July 26, 2003

By	DAVID N NELSON (Friendswood, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: College Algebra, 4th Edition (with upgrade CD-ROM) (Hardcover)

I've just finished using this book and, while I normally keep my textbooks as reference materials, I found this book to be so bad that I'm selling it back! This book falls short when it comes to providing solid examples; clear, concise text; and valid exercises. Specifically, the pages are so crammed full of text and colors that it is often difficult to quickly find specific information. Much of the text and many of the examples fail to adequately prepare the student for the exercise sets. Additionally, the accompanying solution manual, which helped me immensely, has numerous typos and is missing several pages of solutions. I wish I were alone in my opinion, but the overwhelming majority of my class felt about the same. Even our professor was less than impressed. If this is the textbook you must have for class, get some additional references, i.e. Schaums, or something similar, perhaps even another 5 star rated book from Amazon.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Drop the class if this is the text-book., November 17, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: College Algebra, Fourth Edition (Hardcover)

To date, this is the worst textbook I have encountered in my math classes. In fact the instructor uses this book for homework assignments only as the text itself is useless.

To start with, I found the explanations to be badly written, wordy, and confusing. Seems as though this book was designed for a refreshment course rather than for people who are going over the material for the first time.

Then, the examples: there are not enough of them, and the examples do not support the exercises at the end of the section, so if you work out the exercises at the end of the section and encounter a problem, you just don't have an example to help you out.

It continues with the student solution manual on line: due to the lack of examples the student's solution manual is the next tool to try to figure things out. However, the manual appears to be put together almost as an after thought. It is very unorganized, uses shortcuts to the solutions that are sometimes difficult to figure out.

In summery, this book makes it difficult to learn on your own. It does not help deepen and re-enforce your understanding of the material covered in class. From my experience so far, there are much better books that make the time learning more efficient, productive, and fun.