Customer Reviews

Precalculus with Trigonometry: Concepts and Connections

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The book is okay, not really great or bad. Just that it contains too many practice problems that do not derive from concrete examples because either the examples aren't plentiful enough or there is none of them. I hate those warm-up questions because there is usually no background information first. I especially liked the inclusion of harmonic analysis where I could learn how to construct equations from graphs, and intuitively it's either a sum or a product of two sinusoids. Problem? When I got to the practice problems, the author threw a curveball and I was totally lost from there. This isn't the only example since it happens specifically all over the book. I love how the author did in section 9-1. I am introduced to probability,and he gives one measly picture of pair of rolled dice. Then he points out one simple example. Then I am quickly instructed to do the problems. How about more examples? Maybe 3...or 4...? That's nothing new also. To be honest with you, I have a degree in mathematics, but this book, I consider it to be too challenging for high school students especially when the title of the book deals with "Pre-Calculus." There are better books that is deemed user-friendly although Foerster's looks like one, but when in practice, is not. Avoid this book, and hopefully Foerster improves this book before he throws in a newer edition of the book to satisfy his and his fellow authors' greed. Lastly, make sure that math is fun, not a chore. *winks* *winks*

I absolutely hate this book. I have never in my life worked with such a terrible math book. Normally, you can go through a math book and look at examples and eventually figure out how to do something you were having a hard time understanding, but THIS book doesn't explain ANYTHING.

The examples are horrendous, and the author constantly throws in little changes to problems without giving any explanation as to how you cope with these changes. The examples tend to skip entire explanations so you are left with a problem that lacks very important parts that would help you understand why they did what they did.

I am so frusterated with this book, and have absolutely no clue why ANY instructor would use it. If you're looking for thoughtful and thorough explanations for anything having to do with trigonometry, this is certainly not the book for you. F-.