Precalculus (Lial/Hornsby/Schneider Series) [Hardcover]

Margaret L. Lial (Author), John Hornsby (Author), David I. Schneider (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 032122762X | ISBN-13: 978-0321227621 | Publication Date: March 26, 2004 | Edition: 3rd

Focusing on helping students to develop both the conceptual understanding and the analytical skills necessary to experience success in mathematics, we present each mathematical topic in this text using a carefully developed learning system to actively engage students in the learning process. We have tried to address the diverse needs of today's students through a more open design, updated figures and graphs, helpful features, careful explanations of topics, and a comprehensive package of supplements and study aids. Students will benefit from the text's student-oriented approach. We believe instructors will particularly welcome the new Annotated Instructor's Edition, which provides answers in the margin to almost all exercises, plus helpful Teaching Tips.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Marge Lial was always interested in math; it was her favorite subject in the first grade! Marge's intense desire to educate both her students and herself has inspired the writing of numerous best-selling textbooks. Marge, who received Bachelor's and Master's degrees from California State University at Sacramento, is now affiliated with American River College.

Marge is an avid reader and traveler. Her travel experiences often find their way into her books as applications, exercise sets, and feature sets. She is particularly interested in archeology. Trips to various digs and ruin sites have produced some fascinating problems for her textbooks involving such topics as the building of Mayan pyramids and the acoustics of ancient ball courts in the Yucatan.

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When John Hornsby enrolled as an undergraduate at Louisiana State University, he was uncertain whether he wanted to study mathematics, education, or journalism. His ultimate decision was to become a teacher, but after twenty-five years of teaching at the high school and university levels and ten years of writing mathematics textbooks, both of his goals have been realized.

His love for teaching and for mathematics is evident in his passion for working with students and fellow teachers as well. His specific professional interests are recreational mathematics, mathematics history, and incorporating graphing calculators into the curriculum.

John's personal life is busy as he devotes time to his family (wife Gwen, and sons Chris, Jack, and Josh). He has been a rabid baseball fan all of his life. John's other hobbies include numismatics (the study of coins) and record collecting. He loves the music of the 1960s and has an extensive collection of the recorded works of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

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David Schneider has taught mathematics at universities for over 34 years and has authored 36 books. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Oberlin College and a PhD in mathematics from MIT. During most of his professional career, he was on the faculty of the University of Maryland ¿ College Park. His hobbies include travel, dancing, bicycling, and hiking.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1176 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley; 3rd edition (March 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032122762X
• ISBN-13: 978-0321227621
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars neatly organised and pleasant to self-study, February 3, 2004

By 

Brenda Chang (Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Precalculus (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

This is a beautiful book that leads from algebra very smoothly. As a precursor for calculus, it covers all the important topics such as trigonometric functions, identities and equations, polynomial, exponential, rational and logarithmic functions and some analytic geometry. The only topic that it is lacking is probability and statistics.

The majority of the problems have real-life applications accompanied by colourful pictures. With an average of about 90 problems in each chapter section, it does a good job of not being too repetitive. The chapter readings are easy to comprehend and well-organised into little sections and examples.

Overall this is a great textbook to self-study Precalculus from and I had a painless time absorbing it.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beware the "paperback edition" - it's the answer book, March 13, 2004

By 

Collin (Redwood City, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Precalculus: Student's Solution Manual (Paperback)

Last week I ordered a copy of the "paperback edition" of this
book, with ASIN 032100969X. This is NOT a paperback edition!
It is the "Student's Solusions Manual - Precalculus" -- great if
that's what you're looking for, but if you wanted a paperback
edition of the textbook (in this case, for my teen-aged
daughter), you may be disappointed. This is not the textbook
plus answers -- it's just the solutions!

At first I was going to take this up with the vendor
(ecampus.com, who by the way shipped it right on time; it got
here in under a week with standard shipping), but then I realized
it wasn't their fault -- it was amazon.com's description that
was faulty :^<

Oh, the solutions book does have at least one minor typo: p.173,
#105, "The expression is not undefined if (x+1)(x-4)=0, that
is, if x=-1 or x=4. Thus, the domain is the set of all real
numbers except x= -1 and x=4" They meant "The expression is
not DEFINED if..." (that's 'cause (x+1)(x-4) was the
denominator of the expression).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Beware If You Need the Access Code for MyMathLab, August 24, 2011

By 

Mother of 4 Teens (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Precalculus plus MyMathLab Student Access Kit (4th Edition) (Misc. Supplies)

If you are purchasing this book for a college class and need the access code (homework assignments are on the CD), beware as it may not work at your particular school. There were other students in class who also purchased their codes from someplace other than the campus bookstore and they had the same issue. Technical support responds within 12 hours via email (there is no phone # to contact them unless you are an educator). However, they are unable to resolve the issue. Therefore we will be purchasing the access code for the 2nd time at the college bookstore so we are sure that it will work. To be fair, Amazon has been more than helpful with our issue and will allow the whole package to be returned for a full refund (can't return the CD by itself) even though it has been opened. However, rather than spend the time packing this up we are going to purchase only the component that we need so we can keep the book.