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Rating: 
Summary: One of the best books for self study
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books for self study
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 I won'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 outline to cover vectors and so on. One thing about this book is that it has few exercises, which is fine, because what person self-studying is actually going to do 30 exercises . . . I would, but the few exercises gets me moving through the material faster.
Rating:
Summary: A great review
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 I won'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 outline to cover vectors and so on. One thing about this book is that it has few exercises, which is fine, because what person self-studying is actually going to do 30 exercises . . . I would, but the few exercises gets me moving through the material faster.
Rating: 
Summary: self help book for alg/trig/log/calc I. (applied science)
Review: This book is written for someone who has been exposed to the subject but did not understand it, or has not had a math class in a while. Ms. Olive has taken extra effort to help the students avoid the pitfalls often encountered in these math topics. This attitude is reflected throughout the book. I felt that with the numerous problems solved at the back of the book (in detail), the price of this book,was a frugal investment. With vectors and additional physical science problems added to this book, I would give it 5 stars.
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