No comments about Precalculus With Limits A Graphing Approach 5th Edition.

3 comments about Student Solutions Manual for Stewart/Redlin/Watson's Precalculus: Mathematics for Calculus, 5th.

1. I found this product relatively useful. There were a few sections where the answers could have held more detail--mostly in the first few chapters--but by the third I found that the work-throughs for the problems helped me immensely in understanding the mathematics involved.
   
   Even though it only explains half the problems, it's still a great help. I would recommend buying this to other pre-calculus students.



2. OK. So it *does* help a bit. But it doesn't provide solutions to even-numbered problems and it sometimes skips some steps without a clear path on what steps were combined. It does OK, but if this book were a movie dvd, I'd only pay the 99¢ Tuesday price.



3. I thought at first maybe I had the wrong edition or something, but no... fifth edition it is. Some chapters the answers don't match up with the questions in the book i.e. it will say #107 when it's really the answer to #95, #109 is #97 etc. Some of the chapter test answers are just the wrong problem (some have slight mistakes, like copied down wrong. Others are just a completely different problem). I really expect more than this. I'm going down to the bookstore tomorrow to see if it's just my copy (as none of the other reviewers here seemed to notice). Otherwise I'm contacting the publisher.
   
   On the bright side, the problems which ARE correct have been tremendously helpful. Just as an answer guide should. The only reason it's earned two stars.
   
   I should really give it one, because after all... this IS MATH and accuracy is of utmost importance!!!

No comments about Precalculus (4th Edition).

1 comments about College Algebra: Graphs and Models Graphing Calculator Manual Package (3rd Edition).

1. I only wish in 1960's the textbooks where put together like this. Clear concise and with great examples

1 comments about Pre-Calculus For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)).

1. The aim of this book is to introduce the subjects of pre-calculus in an easy, yet complete way. For the most part it accomplish it's objective, nevertheless, it has some typos and errors that will cause the student to get confused (i.e. the first time the student is shown the formula for the difference of cubes the book says something like this (a-b)(a^2+ab+b^3) which is wrong and in latter examples the formula takes the correct form of (a-b)(a^2+ab+b^2) which causes some confusion). Overall, this is a very good book specially for a review of the subjects.
   
   UPDATE
   P.105 Changing a Log's Base
   log5/log3 does not equal ln3/ln5... it should read log5/log3 = ln5/ln3.

No comments about Precalculus, Enhanced WebAssign Edition (with Mathematics and Science Printed Access Card and Start Smart).

1 comments about Precalculus (3rd Edition) (Beecher/Penna/Bittinger Series).

1. This review applies to all books written by Marvin Bittinger. I have used
   his books on elementary algebra, college algebra, precalculus, and calculus. His writing is clear, concise, and always on the level of the
   maturity of his audience. The examples are excellent and the problems are
   suitable for each book. He doesn't "dumb down" the material nor is the
   presentation overly rigorous. I wish he would right a full blown 1,000 -
   1,200 page three semester text for calculus.

No comments about Trigonometry (2nd Edition) (Dugopolski Series).

5 comments about Precalculus: A Problems-Oriented Approach (with CD-ROM and iLrn Tutorial).

1. The reason for having every topic under the sun in contemporary freshman math books is not educational fads, it is market forces. I have had many converstations with textbook marketing people and have asked them why they have so many topics in their books. The answer was, 'to have the book adopted by as many departments as possible.' The result: professors must organize and edit the contents of the book, a job that properly belongs to the author and publisher.



2. I'm an honors math major who had to use this text for a high-school AP math class a few years ago.
   
   The first reviewer has hit the nail on the head. A reader could be forgiven for thinking Cohen suffered from ADHD. He's fine at explaining the small picture, but utterly hopeless at fitting all the little bits into any kind of coherent framework. This book is all over the place, bouncing here and there, seemingly at mere whim. It doesn't really matter WHY it's so disorganized--whether the result of some ed-school fad or a publisher's marketing strategy. In the end, it's still disorganized.
   
   If your professor takes the trouble to rearrange the order of the chapters and provides plenty of supplemental material, this book might be marginally useful. But I certainly wouldn't recommend it as the primary text for a precalc course. Michael Sullivan's textbook is better organized, if not quite so lucid in its particulars.



3. My son was assigned this textbook last year in a junior college math class. He and his classmates found it frustrating. I had to spend hours tutoring him and several of his friends. As a result, I became intimately familiar with Cohen's Precalculus and the confusion it caused students.
   
   My opinion of this book is much like that of the first and last reviewers. There is no discernible order to the chapters; the book doesn't progress in any logical way from what the students have just learned to what immediately follows. (For example: Why didn't the chapter on linear equations immediately follow the chapter on matrices? That's the whole point of matrices--we use them to solve linear equations!).
   
   Sad to say, this book is just a big jumble of miscellaneous material lumped together under the rubric of precalculus. I don't know why the author and publisher chose to arrange the material this way. A previous reviewer suggests that the market forces textbook authors to include everything but the kitchen sink. Even if true, this explanation is irrelevant: it might explain why the book crams so much between its covers, but it doesn't explain the haphazard arrangement of the material. The book certainly didn't do my son or his classmates much good. Although they managed to memorize and regurgitate their lessons well enough to pass the final exam, the mathematical knowledge they gleaned wasn't retained very well because it was never put into any kind of logical order. This book provided no framework that made sense of the random lessons they received. In my opinion, that is not a good way to teach anything, especially an abstract subject like math.



4. I see that other reviewers have beaten me to the punch. I, too, found the individual chapters very good and the overall organization confused. Like a previous reviewer, I think Cohen's Precalculus would best serve as a supplement to Michael Sullivan's more effectively organized book.



5. A grab bag of precalc topics. Makes a good refresher, but not a good intro.

No comments about Prealgebra (5th Edition) (Bittinger Developmental Mathematics Series).