Customer Reviews

Precalculus: A Self-Teaching Guide (Wiley Self-Teaching Guides)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Like the other reviewers for this book, I found many errors. Fortunately for me, I am reviewing the material rather than learning for the first time.

I can't imagine how frustrated and inadequate new learners must feel as they try to identify and apply the rules of math with incorrect answers to both examples and self-test problems. I would recommend new learners look to another book to learn Precalculus.

While I have found other Wiley Self Teaching Guides to be accurate and very helpful, Wiley Publishing didn't respond to my suggestion to add a correction paper to every copy of this edition (the minimum ethical response).

I would also that any one considering a Wiley Publishing purchase to check with online reviews before purchasing.

The presentation of the subject matter is very adroit, but the problem with the book is two fold:

1) there are numerous errors. For instance, on page 150 problem 1 can only be solved using one measure of the triangle, yet the other measure of the triangle is incorrect for the degree measure provided. In the same set of sample problems, the 7th problem is entirely inconsistent with errors in both the problem statement, the solution statement, and the diagram of the solution statement. This is only a single example, but I marked each problem I found wrong in the book and found that there is a high (~10%) error rate . As another reviewer pointed out, there are even errors in the discussion of identities and axioms, which is horrendous for the students. Errors in problems sets only confuse people, but errors in the lesson is catastrophic, especially in a section you're supposed to memorize.

2) There simply are not enough problem sets to do in order to gain a mastery of the subject matter. There are usually 6 or 7 problems per section, and no additional problems which conclude a chapter. The standard textbook provides this sort of exhaustive problem sets, and this is quite useful for a mastery of the subject. You may be intimately familiar with the assertions of the text, but you will have a hard time applying them without practice.

I am only into Chapter 3 and have found numerous mistakes. Including mistakes in important formulas such as the Quadratic Formula. I do not recommend this book to anyone who already has problems with math!

Breifly - there are errata in even the 'Basics' section at the beginning of the book, which is the elementary algebra review.

The cover of the book boasts, "Over two million copies sold". Well, if that's the case, then there has been over $35.9 million dollars wasted by trusting consumers (at $17.95 retail). I invite the lazy editor of this book to check my math.

I was bothered by the review written by Antonios Giannakas. Mr. Giannakas calls himself a mathematician, I am not convinced he ever read the book. If I (an undergrad.) can find numerous mistakes in this math text, a MATHEMATICIAN should be appalled by the amount of incorrect information in this book. It is hard to believe this book was ever published in the first place. STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK!

-a mathematician

Although the authors have very clear ways of explaining mathematical processes and procedures, the book contains plenty of errors, some minor, some major.

For example, when explaining the relationships between trig expressions (p. 153), it is stated that sin u = 1/cos u; in fact, a sine is the inverse of a cosecant, not a cosine. A simple but important typographical error.

On page 131, it is clearly stated that 9pi/4 radians is a coterminal of 7pi/4 radians; they are at righta angles to each other. The authors arrived at this solution using incorrect math, which does not lead me to believe that they are checking their work very well.

I have found many more such errors, and I am disappointed with the book. I didn't buy it from Amazon, and I'm taking it back to the store for a refund.

This book contains several errors. It is unsuitable as a refresher and COMPLETELY unsuitable as a self-teaching guide. I suggest "Trigonometry Refresher" by A. Albert Klaf.

If the purpose of instructional books is to build a foundation of knowledge in a subject, this one fails. The concepts are presented in a relatively straightforward fashion, but there really aren't enough problems to enable the reader to master those concepts. As many other reviewers have noted, the book is riddled with errors, including some arithmetic errors that are so painfully basic that the authors should be embarrassed to have their names attached to the finished product - and those are just the ones I noticed; I'm sure someone who really knows their precalculus could find dozens more. If I wasn't already fairly comfortable with math, the errors in this book would seriously undermine my confidence in my skills; as it is, they just undermine my confidence in the authors' skills.

This is an excellent self-teaching/review guide for pre-calculus. It is extremely difficult to try to learn mathematics from a book, but this one made it fairly easy. My only criticism is that I found two errors in the solutions to problems presented. They were obvious, but a student who is afraid of math may be unsettled by the errors. I would also have liked more practice problems.

Despite those criticisms, this is an excellent book.

A great self teaching guide.
Just have some backround before otherwise it will be too spread out.
Very straight to the point and simple