Precalculus: A Problems-Oriented Approach

Rating:
Summary: Clear, yet Strangely Incoherent
Review: David Cohen does an excellent job in the individual chapters explaining this or that component of precalculus. But the book as a whole is strangely incoherent. The order of the chapters seems almost random, as the book jumps from topic to disconnected topic. For example, we are given a clear account of how to work matrices...and then are never told or shown WHY we bothered learning it in the first place--we're hustled off to another unrelated topic. So-called theorists in our fad-ridden education departments call this technique "spiraling," a tactic designed to keep the little kiddies on their toes and off balance and thus more receptive to exploring new things. Or something like that. In actual practice, however, as well as according to common sense, the result of "spiraling" is only frustration and confusion. If Cohen would rearrange the order of the chapters and provide some connective tissue, this would probably make it a really good textbook.

Rating:
Summary: Clear and Detailed
Review: I used this text as preparation for university calculus. Each chapter has a high level of rigor and clearly explains the mechanics of solving problems. The text ignores extensive discussion of applications, which is a good thing. References to applications in introductory math texts always strike me as ad hoc, distracting and useless. If you want to know why some particular analytic method is useful in the real world then you need to study up in the particular discipline. If you want a straight and detailed exposition of methods then this is the text. Much stronger than the Larson texts on college algebra/trigonometry.

Rating:
Summary: Incoherent is the word, all right
Review: I'm an honors math major who had to use this text for a high-school AP math class a few years ago.

The first reviewer has hit the nail on the head. A reader could be forgiven for thinking Cohen suffered from ADHD. He's fine at explaining the small picture, but utterly hopeless at fitting all the little bits into any kind of coherent framework. This book is all over the place, bouncing here and there, seemingly at mere whim. It doesn't really matter WHY it's so disorganized--whether the result of some ed-school fad or a publisher's marketing strategy. In the end, it's still disorganized.

If your professor takes the trouble to rearrange the order of the chapters and provides plenty of supplemental material, this book might be marginally useful. But I certainly wouldn't recommend it as the primary text for a precalc course. Michael Sullivan's textbook is better organized, if not quite so lucid in its particulars.

Rating:
Summary: The previous reveiwer is incorrect.
Review: The reason for having every topic under the sun in contemporary freshman math books is not educational fads, it is market forces. I have had many converstations with textbook marketing people and have asked them why they have so many topics in their books. The answer was, 'to have the book adopted by as many departments as possible.' The result: professors must organize and edit the contents of the book, a job that properly belongs to the author and publisher.