Customer Reviews

Smart CD (Windows) to accompany Precalculus: Functions and Graphs

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The product description boasts that "[t]he Barnett, Ziegler, Byleen College Algebra/Precalculus series is designed to be user friendly and to maximize student comprehension." It should have been sent back to the editors before publication, because _Precalculus_ is anything but.

Among the various and sundry flaws with this text:

1. The fluctuating emphasis on word problems is bizarre: in the very first section ("Linear Equations and Applications") it launches into a barrage of word problems (geometry, number theory, quantity-rate-time, distance-rate-time, chemistry, and more), as though students have the basic skills and the experience to grapple with this huge mass of content. From there, it moves on to the more basic skills of solving linear inequalities, and factoring quadratics. There are some word problems, but gone is the all-applications-all-the-time approach in favour of developing underlying concepts. In addition, the book's claim that "the worked examples are followed by matched problems that reinforce the concept that is being taught" is actually a flaw: students who learn from this text, learn to solve word problems by pattern-matching. Presented with a slightly different problem that draws upon skills they have picked up, they are lost.

2. The ordering of the content is seemingly random. for example: in Chapter 1, students are presented with a slew of opportunities to express this quantity in terms of that one. Six sections later, in Chapter 2, they learn what a function is (ie, it's an expression of one quantity in terms of another), and from there they have several opportunities to...express one quantity in terms of another. Some of the exercises in Chapter 2 are virtually identical in content to some of the exercises in Chapter 1 - for instance, students are asked to find break-even points of cost functions in both chapters. Most perplexing choice of ordering: students are taught to find equations of, and graph, circles in Section 2-1, one section before they're taught to find equations of,and graph, straight lines. One section later we arrive at the "Functions" unit, followed by..."Graphing Functions".

3 - This book would be around 200 pages shorter if it omitted all of the graphing calculator applications, which it should. There are questions asking students to describe the shape, or find the range, of a function by plotting it on a graphing calulator. As a pedagogical exercise, this is useless. It's also counterproductive from the perspective of instructors faced with the unenviable task of teaching students to graph functions and find their ranges algebraically. Although the emphasis of a precalculus class should not be overly theoretical, students should come out of it with some notion of what sorts of operations are mathematically and logically sound. Finding the range of a function by plotting it on a calculator is not, while completing the square of a quadratic and analyzing it is. The book presents these two methods on equal footing.

4 - Speaking of graphing functions: the book pays some lip service to graphing functions by applying transformations - for instance, students should know what the graph of y=x^2 looks like, and from there they can apply transformations in order to graph y=-2(x-4)^2+3. But soon it abandons this approach, and graphing functions pointwise becomes the method of choice.

5 - The book description claims an emphasis on computational skills over theory. Indeed, it de-emphasizes theory to the point of presenting content as a series of disjoint rules. The "here's a word problem, here's the formula you need for it, now do two just like it" approach is one example, but it's in the third chapter that the authors' contempt for mathematical justification really comes through. That section (on polynomials) is awash with a dozen methods of estimating bounds of zeroes of function by using synthetic division. Synthetic division itself is presented without proof, and the applications are all given as formulas without any justification. Later, in chapter 4, we get eight rules of logarithms without a lick of explanation. Contrary to its goal of emphasizing problem solving by opting not to muddy the waters with theory, this approach leaves students with so little grasp of the underlying content that they can't solve any problems beyond the exact ones presented in the text.

These are just some of the problems with Chapters 1-4; I haven't taught the second-semester course, which uses Chapters 5-8. I have taught a variety of first-year college math classes, and never have I found a textbook so difficult to work from. Every attempt to instill some theoretical comprehension is undermined by the scattered, calculator-dependent approach of the text. My students agree: I've had several tell me that they have never had such an unreadable text. I'd advise math departments to search around for a twenty-year-old college algebra text that's still in print, and use it. (If they can't, they should write to the publisher of such a text for permission to copy it.) Older texts omit the calculator mumbo-jumbo and insist are designed to instill mastery of a rudimentary set of skills, rather than memorization of a handful of formulas - and that's the best way to prepare future calculus students.

This book is set up differently than most other textbooks, especially math text books. It combines what should be in three or four separate sections into one on many accounts. The professor that I have teaching this course repeats daily the fact that this book is somewhat confusing as well, which leads me to wonder why he would have chosen it as the text for his course.

I am not a big fan of this book either. And to answer another reviewer's question "why did he pick this book," the answer is he probably didn't. Publishers push their books on either a committee, or a dept. head.

This book was so unfavorable that our institution replaced it after only a year with the Stewart Pre-calc (don't know about that text, but his Calculus book is great). There were a lot of problems that went beyond the scope of the material in the text, and a lot of students had difficulty.

Later on, I was told by a math instructor that Pre-calc is a "stepping stone" to more technical and in-depth study, and that it is supposed to stretch the student in preparation for the calculus. Still, I had a harder time with this book than I believe I should have.

If you have to use this book, Schaum's makes a good supplement to go along with it. For the second part, just use their trig book. It does have a nice cover though, doesn't it?

Obviously the basic concept is as before, but the teaching approach is very outdated. I am a serious maths student, 2 years ahead of my math class. I like to use the CDrom to study and I am so very surprised that the publisher allows a winsow 95/98 version of Cd-rom to be sold with this latest book. I believe a lot of tech craze students will have difficulties reading the disc. Ziegler is a big name, but not their effort. Some of the newer math books by inovative professor are much better. Our parents paying $200 for the package of student manual and the text. They did not put too much thoughts into the cd tutoring. For precal book, go with James Steward, precal latest edition 4th, new version will come out Nov 05, ISBN 0534434215, better cd inactive prgram, good study guide. Amazon basically needs to review this and they have to change the CD before they can put that in the market or they should have a more explicit explanation about the book, pros and cons.... suggestion to the readers.

Due to the lack of info from my professor, this was actually not the book required for the class, but the one used in years previous. Luckily it has many of the same questions and work problems as the newer edition. I'm very glad I got it. A little extra work marking the homework problems, but it saved me over $100.

not too complicated.
straight forward examples.
not recommended for trig/math analysis course takers.

Until recently, Mount Mercy College, where I teach math and computers, had a two-course precalculus sequence in the mathematics curriculum. If that were still the case, this is the book I would select as the text. I found it so readable, not in the sense of understanding, but in the sense of being easy on the eyes. Using blue and red to highlight headers and other key topic pointers, I found it very easy to follow. In terms of coverage, it is standard; there is nothing here that differentiates it from any other text written for the two-semester sequence.
There are many exercises at the ends of the sections and chapters and solutions to all of them appear in an appendix. One characteristic that I found very positive was that there is very little in the way of technology. What does appear is limited to the use of graphing calculators. In general, I find books that demonstrate how to do mathematical operations using a graphing calculator, a symbolic math package and Excel to be morbidly obese. To me, doing everything three ways is an absurd waste of time. I applaud the authors for their choice, after all even without the heavy presence of technology; the book is still over 1000 pages.