College Algebra (8th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Hire A Tutor
Review: I agree with the other reviews - this is a poor book. Examples are terse, not well explained, and often don't apply to the exercises you have to do. College Algebra is an intimidating class for nonmajors (perhaps for majors too), and this book does not help. I'd encourage any professor with a choice not to use this book.

So what to do if it's required, like it was for me? I'd say buy the book used (lots of low priced options currently), and use the savings to hire a good tutor to help explain what the book doesn't. I did this, and it did help a lot. I really only turned to the book to write the problems down, and ignored the rest, because otherwise I got too frustrated.

Rating:
Summary: How to be frustrated with algebra without really trying.
Review: I am in the midst of taking the third in a succession of algebra courses using this particular series of textbooks. This book, by far, surpasses the others in difficulty of use! Many of the illustrations seem to have little or no bearing upon the problems given and the explanations can be obscure at best. The book is also poorly edited making matters even worse. If you have never before experienced the height of frustration, I would recommend this book as a means of getting there. The sad part is that I really wanted to like algebra and this book has made it almost impossible.

Rating:
Summary: If there was a zero rating, this book would have it.
Review: Incomprehensible is the best word I can find for this book. I'm good at math and I can't understand half this book. It's the worst textbook I have ever had to deal with. Obviously college instructors do not read the reviews.

The authors give one poor example for every problem, work through the sections as if the reader already knows all the methods, and introduce new concepts without so much as a definition. It's BAD BAD BAD!

College instructors: If you want to confuse your students and discourage them from taking any more classes in math, choose this book.

Rating:
Summary: If there was a zero rating, this book would have it.
Review: This book was not written for students. It was written for those already fluent in algebra. Why this was chosen as the textbook for my college algebra course, I will never know.
The explanations are terse, and if the student does not already posess a natural affinity for mathematics, lead to even greater confusion. Vital steps are glossed over as if the author thinks everyone reading the book instantly understands without explanation or example.

Rating:
Summary: Obviously the authors do not pay attention to reviews....
Review: This has to be the most useless math book ever! You would think that by the 8th edition they would have made some changes to enable learning. The only thing that saved me in this class was the great interactive web program (which of course must be purchased separately unless you are buying brand new @ $125.00).

I used to feel that I was fairly good at math. Thanks to this book, I (and the rest of the students in my class) feel like never taking another math class again!!

Rating:
Summary: Frustration Personified!!!
Review: This is the third algebra class I've taken and I received an A on my other two classes. Using this textbook, I'll be fortunate to pass. The problems are not explained well, there are not examples for every type of problem, the review problems and test at the end of each chapter do not having the corresponding section from which they were taken. The way the authors explain problems are different from what I was taught before. Given a choice, I would not buy this textbook. I have to go to my intermediate text by a different author and even that doesn't help much.