Reviews (4)

Just what I needed to get up to speed.
I was nine years removed from Calculus when I decided to work towards a Physics degree...needless to say, I was rusty when it came to algebra, much less trig.So, after completing "Practical Algebra" by Peter Selby (HIGHLY recommended), I dove into this before retaking Calculus I (and II and III and IV).It is a great way to quickly relearn what will be needed for any collegiate level Calculus.Note that there are not necessarly complete explanationsnor massive amounts of problem sets, but just enough are worked through step by step, with only a handful of exercises for each concept.This is a great supplement to anyone lost in Calc I, or that needs to refresh before it.

Cheap, highly-focused and useful review for calculus
I'd taken Calculus ten years ago and needed to retake it. After working through 'Forgotten Algebra', this book was a godsend. It's B.S.-free and highly focused on what you need BEFORECalculus. If you buy the first edition used (as I did), then it's cheap.

Best book for review
These guys are geniuses for presetnting complex information in a digestable, direct, witty, and accurate manner.Great for remembering forgotten trig and algebra.Awesome calc primer.

I salute a rare erudite math professor who can actually teach.Where can we find more?My school is full of passive aggressive math professors who know their stuff but cant teach.

Isbn: 0673993973
Sales Rank: 3247788

Reviews (2)

excellent text
While I have not taught from this book and have not gone through the entire text, from what I've seen this is an excellent text.
From the preface: "[E]xamples are consistently used to introduce, to explain and to motivate concepts...all of the initial exercise for each section are carefully correlated with the worked examples in that section." Based on my observations, this is true. Exercises following most sections are grouped into three categories: the first consist of these relatively routine problems closely correlated with the examples in the text of the section, and two more categories, each successively more difficult. There are many nice exercises that guide the student through a discovery process. The text is quite thorough and contains many topics not included in the bare-bones precalc text. For example, iteration of (the composition of) functions is presented in the section on composition. But the topic follows, with clear demarcation, that of basics of composition and hence can be omitted cleanly. Elegant results, some of which I had not been familiar with, such as Brahmagupta's theorem, are developed in some exercises. In the section on exponential growth and decay, the logistic growth model is developed in the exercises. But the text works fine even when omitting such challenge problems or those problems developing such optional topics.
While the book does have calculator applications exercises, I agree with the author's philosophy, that while "The graphing utility is and invaluable tool for learning mathematics... the mathematics curriculum should drive the technology, not the other way around."
I also use this book as a reference text.
Apparently the author, Prof. Cohen, was the director of the precalculus courses at UCLA. His experience shows in this book.
Update 5/4/2005: One reservation I have about the text is that the graphs are not always accurate. I feel strongly that graphs should always be presented as accurately as possible to reflect the true nature of the curves.

Isbn: 0321057775
Sales Rank: 712448
Subjects:  1. Algebra    2. Functions    3. Mathematics    4. Pre-Calculus    5. Science/Mathematics    6. Theory Of Functions   

Isbn: 0070070083
Sales Rank: 882955
Subjects:  1. Accounting - General    2. Examinations, questions, etc    3. General    4. History & Philosophy    5. Mathematics    6. Science (General)    7. Study Aids    8. Study Guides    9. Test Prep    10. Tests    11. Mathematics / Arithmetic   

Reviews (12)

Tutor
Highly recommended by a relative who has a degree in electrical engineering and retired from IBM as a programmer.

If you've forgotten how math works, this is THE ticket!
My intent was to enter Calculus 1 and I had one month to review all the math I'd forgotten over the past 12 years.This book was instrumental in helping me to remember everything necessary to do well in Calculus (I got an A).The solved exercises and the amazing amount of detail in the solutions they provide was nothing short of awesome!I highly recommend this book if you're refreshing yourself in Math that you've forgotten over the years.It covers everything and makes you do exercises to dust off your cobwebs.I still use it even in Calc 2 because I'm constantly going back to the basics.This book had at least 30 problems in each category and it's enough to really get you refreshed and ready for Calc!

Reviews (9)

A pleasure to read and excellent introduction to algebra
Kenn Amdahl has succeeded in making algebra look like a game and maybe he is right.
I recommend this book to anybody who has the slightest interest in the subject. It reads almost like listening to your mathematically inclined buddy exchanging a few words on mathematics over a beer; that's what I felt, two buddies getting together and just shooting breeze over mathematics.
It certainly made me conscious of paying more attention to VOCABULARY and CONCEPTS and less on manipulation.
You won't regret the time you spent on this book nor the money!

FANTASTIC BOOK ON ALGEBRA!!!!!!
THIS HAS GOT TO BE ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS ON ALGEBRA CONCEPTS THAT THERE IS ON THE MARKET. I AM OVER 60 YRS. OLD AND WANTED TO STUDY ALGEBRA. I ONLY WISH THERE EXISTED MATH TEACHERS WITH THE ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE CONCEPTS AS CAN THESE GENTELMEN. WOULD GIVE 10 STARS IF POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!

Editorial Review

Isbn: 0192880721
Sales Rank: 554581
Subjects:  1. General    2. Mathematics    3. Mathematics (General)    4. Popular works    5. Science/Mathematics    6. Science: General Issues   

Reviews (1)

Reviews (7)

The best of one of the best
Martin Gardner is the grand old man of puzzles and recreational mathematics. I recommend this book for intermediary and advanced puzzle enthusiasts - beginners might find some of these too challenging.

Intermediary puzzlists will find the pleasures of often working at the upper edge of their skills. The solutions at the end of the book are complete enough so that even those who didn't get it right the first time will get aha insights.

The book is well worth its price even for puzzle enthusiasts. Even I knew many of the puzzles beforehand - classics indeed - but the notes in the solutions often add a twist, a clever solution or a human interest point of view.

The age recommendation of amazon.com - 4-8 years - is probably either an insider joke or a typo. I'd recommend this book to people between 14-80 years of age, and even over.

Puzzles requiring intermediate mathematical skills
Marvelous book. I found it better than many books but my friends, who were not that conversant with intermediate mathematics did not like it much. Though this book doesn't require a knowledge of calculus, people who have this level might appreciate the book more. But it has more to do with mathematical 'thinking' rather than mathematics itself.

So get this one if you are good at mathematical thinking and want to challenge yourself. If you are weak in math and would rather read puzzles that require only logic, cleverness, and lateral thinking only, this may not be the one for you.

Reviews (1)

Reviews (4)

Math as science, art and life
What's so truly impressive about Jacobs' book is the way in which hedemonstrates that math is all around.His choice of subjects provides thereader with a broad introduction to the mathematical sciences, includinggeometry, probability, combinatorics, statistics, topology and more.Moreimportantly, his examples and explanations make it relevant andfun.

Jacobs' writing is clear (which cannot be said for many books onmath at any level) and his organization sweeps the reader right along.Though technically a textbook, this is excellent reading for anyone who'sinterested in learning about math.I read it in junior high school, andhave re-read bits and pieces as I progressed through college and graduateschool.His subjects are complex enough to merit rethinking, yet hisexplanations clear enough to be grasped by the first time reader.

Trulyone of the great introductory math texts -- especially for those who thinkthey don't need to know or can't understand math.

This book fosters true love of math.
I'm a 36-year old homeschooling mother who had done calculus in high school and college, and mechanically got some right answers, but never knew why.I hadn't bothered to slow down and notice the beauty and power of thelanguage of mathematics.In his textbook, Mathematics: A Human Endeavor,Harold Jacobs smashed my lack of confidence into a million pieces.Heshowers the student with so much real-life relevance and humor, that even aslight amount of curiosity about the subject bears delicous fruit.Workingthrough this book will convince any human being, of almost any age, that heor she is a born mathematician.

Reviews (3)

One of the best books for self study
As a finance professional, I was becoming overwhelmed with the growing complexity of financial products.Over time, my patch work math education was beginning to fray resulting in growing frustration and loss of confidence.

Jenny Olive's book is very helpful for people entering into a self study math program to bring together their fragmented college level math education and build mathematical understanding. If you were like me, the fast pace of college level courses forced you to cut corners and rush through material without the deep understanding that builds confidence.The book begins with Algebra and moves on to Trig and Calculus.The explanations are extremely lucid and the exercises are put together intelligently to move you toward greater complexity.And yes, there is no substitute for working out the problems as any good mathematician will tell you.I disagree with a previous reviewer on this score. Although, I felt (somewhat arrogantly) that I did not need to review Algebra, I found myself red faced and stuck in some of the more advanced problems.Fortunately the clear explanation and repeated problem solving gave me the insights that I was lacking.I found it helpful to work with a graphing calculator to help visualize some of the mathematics.It's also a great way to learn a graphing calculator!

I understand that Ms. Olive is adding two new chapters to her next edition, which she has kindly made available on her website for persons who own the current version. It would be nice if she would make it available in a downloadable PDF version.

I am hoping that the author will choose to follow this up with similar books on Probability and Linear Algebra.Her recommendations for further reading would also be very helpful.Great math books (and math teachers)are worth their weight in gold.Buy this book for your math library.You won't regret it.

A great review
I didn't take any Math senior year, and I took 2 years off after high school, and now I'm going to be a Computer Science major, so I really needed this book!I bought it a week ago and I'm halfway done, so now Iwon't have to take precalculus over again.The previous reviewer is right,it could include more, but if I have time, I'll just buy a Schwab outlineto cover vectors and so on.One thing about this book is that it has fewexercises, which is fine, because what person self-studying is actuallygoing to do 30 exercises . . . I would, but the few exercises getsmemoving through the material faster.

Reviews (30)

Dime store teaching philosophy aimed at an unknown audience.
Who is this book for???It appears to be written for children ages 6 to 9. The text revolves around fictitious characters and banal, time-wasting plots, as if the full concentration of the target reader could only be garnered by wrapping the science into a bed time fable.But what 9-year-old would wade through hundreds of pages to self teach elementary trigonometry, physics and calculus on the way to understanding wave analysis?Perhaps an adult is supposed to read out loud to a child looking at the pictures.I tried it with my 9-year-old daughter and she was bored stiff.The idea of blending pseudo-motivational fiction with science is dead.Barron's tried it with some of its "The Easy Way" remedial math texts, and ended up with junk that everyone hates.But this book is worse.For example, it tries to explain the concept of imaginary numbers in a ludicrous section in which we are to accept the emotional whims of not-so-bright cartoon-like characters as the rationale behind it all.To put it in a nutshell, 2nd grade teaching techniques are used for 10th grade (and up thorough college) material.Oddly, the text is peppered with elementary sentences in various foreign languages, presumably in case you want to simultaneously learn to spell "but no!" in French.

Excellent book on fourier transform
This book has done an excellent job on explaining fourier transformation. Although I believe I have clear understanding on fourier transform, this book takes me to a new journey and let me look at this transform from another perspective. Well done!

However, the reason I can not give this book five star is that the book contains many redundant and irrelavant dialogues which distract your attention from time to time. To speed up your reading, you have to filter it out.

In addition, this book is over size and make it difficult for bed-time reading.