Precalculus (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Beware the "paperback edition" - it's the answer book
Review: Last week I ordered a copy of the "paperback edition" of this
book, with ASIN 032100969X. This is NOT a paperback edition!
It is the "Student's Solusions Manual - Precalculus" -- great if
that's what you're looking for, but if you wanted a paperback
edition of the textbook (in this case, for my teen-aged
daughter), you may be disappointed. This is not the textbook
plus answers -- it's just the solutions!

At first I was going to take this up with the vendor
(ecampus.com, who by the way shipped it right on time; it got
here in under a week with standard shipping), but then I realized
it wasn't their fault -- it was amazon.com's description that
was faulty :^<

Oh, the solutions book does have at least one minor typo: p.173,
#105, "The expression is not undefined if (x+1)(x-4)=0, that
is, if x=-1 or x=4. Thus, the domain is the set of all real
numbers except x= -1 and x=4" They meant "The expression is
not DEFINED if..." (that's 'cause (x+1)(x-4) was the
denominator of the expression).

Rating:
Summary: neatly organised and pleasant to self-study
Review: This is a beautiful book that leads from algebra very smoothly. As a precursor for calculus, it covers all the important topics such as trigonometric functions, identities and equations, polynomial, exponential, rational and logarithmic functions and some analytic geometry. The only topic that it is lacking is probability and statistics.

The majority of the problems have real-life applications accompanied by colourful pictures. With an average of about 90 problems in each chapter section, it does a good job of not being too repetitive. The chapter readings are easy to comprehend and well-organised into little sections and examples.

Overall this is a great textbook to self-study Precalculus from and I had a painless time absorbing it.