College Algebra

Abstract

This book represents a significant departure from the current crop of commercialcollege algebra textbooks. In our view, the core material for the (non-remedial)courses defined by these tomes is but a shadow of that traditionally covered materialin a reasonable high school program. Moreover, much of the material is substantiallyrepeated from earlier study and it proceeds at a slow pace with extensive practice anda large number of routine exercises. As taught, such coursestend to be ill-advisedattempts to prepare the student for extensive calculationsusing calculators, withsupposed “real life” examples offered for motivation and practice. Given the limitedtime and large number of individual topics to study, the average student emerges,perhaps, with the ability to answer isolated questions and the well-founded view thatthe rewards of the study of algebra (and of mathematics in general) lie solely in theexperience of applying opaque formulas and mysterious algorithms in the productionof quantitative answers