51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Precalculus, March 3, 2007
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Precalculus (Mass Market Paperback)
This book is worth its weight in gold. However, it is not a substitute for a complete textbook. Mr. Kelley has a gift. He makes algebra and trigonometry easy to understand. My students rave about The Complete Idiot's Guide to Precalculus. Regardless of your ability level this book will significantly increase your insight and understanding. Many teachers can do precalculus. There are not a lot of teachers who are good at explaining precalculus. W Michael Kelley is great. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Precalculus is so good I felt compelled to write this review. You will cherish the book.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Will This book Show You Enough for Pre-Cal?, September 27, 2009
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Precalculus (Mass Market Paperback)
First off let me invite you to recognize that different schools teach different parts of the mathematical spectrum for this course. But a very comprehensive course will essentially review the end of algebra II, some trig., then introduce some parts of calculus to give you an idea where your gonna be going with this stuff. Really though one could say it's just advanced algrebra dealing with new forms of functions.
Also let's understand that this book is not meant to be a textbook and thus will not be loaded with practice problems. That's not generally included in a study aid/self teaching guide like this. However, I do admit this book was short on the examples as well as practice problems, so I say this tongue in cheek.
So how does this book stack up? It's great! Really it is. It covers nearly everything that you'll be looking at in Pre-calculus. One thing it does skip though is Polynomial Functions. It does cover polynomials, even the fundamental theorem of algebra, but not the functions of polynomials. I've noticed that Forgotten Calculus (Barbara Lee) as well as Pre-Calculus Demystified (Rhonda Huettenmueller) do cover these.
For those of you looking for help in Trigonometry there is a small section here, which is helpful for most of trig. However when you get to identities this book won't be too helpful because it doesn't even cover the half-angle identities, sum-product identities, nor the very basic quotient identities. The last of these is almost too obvious to worry about (you'll see when you get a basic lesson on trig.), however the other two are very useful tools for proving two trig functions as being equivalent to each other. Also this section of the book should have several examples as the only way to really get to know how to work identities is to do large quantities of them, yet start doing them several examples are helpful. However you could always buy a solutions manual for trig textbooks that cover these so you could see several worked out examples. Honestly, don't expect to find any self teaching guide filled with enough examples on this particular subject.
Also I think it would be appropriate to introduce some information on Limits here and then review (and go more in depth in his calculus book). However Limits are not talked about in this book which is likely due to the fact that he talks about them in his next book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Calculus. I don't know how much detail he gets into on these in his next book, but I can tell you they're not talked about here.
It also would have been nice to have had a small introduction to sequences and sets here. But alas the book is found wanton.
I won't detail what the book does talk about since it's able to be previewed here on Amazon when you're logged into your account. However, I must say, those parts it does discuss are easy to understand. In order for this book to make it to a "self teaching guide status" it would need to have some more examples and practice problems (as mentioned earlier), but overall it will help you if you are trying to learn on your own or just need some clarification on lecture. I recommend it.
Overall I'd give this book a 4.7 if I could because I think that some parts could use a bit more expansion, like more examples as noted earlier , but gave it 5 stars because (can't choose 4.7 anyhow) it still is a worthy supplement.
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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than Valium . . ., December 11, 2005
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Precalculus (Mass Market Paperback)
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Precalculus is an excellent book for readers who want to venture into the Land of Calculus, but fear they have neither the skill nor the "mathematical mind" to do so. At the end of this journey, you'll feel calm, confident and ready to do battle with "The Calculus." Highly recommended to math-phobes everywhere!
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