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Rating: 
Summary: #1 book for Pre-Calculus
Review: If this book helped me, it also can help you!
Rating: 
Summary: If you're mathematically competent but lazy, get this book!
Review: This book is not a tutorial or self-teaching guide, it's more of a reference book. If you are not familiar with intermediate algebra and trigonometry this book will not be useful to you. But if you know the basic concepts of alg/trig you will find this book useful for that one difficult problem that is in every workset of your textbook. So, if you don't want to spend time concentrating on one problem, you can spend time searching for a similar problem in this book that will get you started on the original problem. But if you need the entire problem worked out with explanations this is not the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: In a word: Excellent
Review: This is the book to go to to remember how to do all those mathematical things, before calculus, we used to know but either forgot, took for granted, or shortcut and circumvented. Perfect example: solving inequalities involving absolute values -> the method I was using was producing right answers, however it was 'shotcutting' rather than solving the problem properly and robustly. Had a look inside...found an example...instant recollection and on my way again, the right way!As far as I can tell there are not obvious mistakes (the review further down obviously has a really old copy or is just mistaken) and the coverage is quite comprehensive (though there are no problems for you to solve...as the title says, it is entirely solved problems and LOTS of them!). This isn't a book to teach you everything (though, I think if you worked through every example in whatever section, you would be a significantly better mathematician then when you started). As Einstein said, learng by example isn't just a way to learn...it's the only way to learn! It is a fine supplemental text and reference. The solutions are very clear, explicit and step by step. There are no logic jumps that can leave you wondering how the hell did they get from here to there? It is very systematic (even with explanations of what operation they are doing along the way- like a good teacher explaning how to do something without jumping steps). Personally I regard the $18 as money well spent. It is an enormous book for the price, rich in content and extremely helpful. And given the price, what more could you want? It's a very useful addition to your library, if only as a reference work. There are basic attack strategies at the beginning of each chapter and masses of problems! Sure, the theory it covers is contained within the problems, not explicitly...hence you may need your course book along with this (or maybe as I said earlier: just try to learn from this book, which might be kinda weird and fun). In all: well worth 5 stars! YOu can't expect a magical panacea for all your mathematical woes to be found within...but it tries! And it does deliver a great deal... Happy Mathematics!
Rating:
Summary: dismal forebodings
Review: What can you say about a book whose answer to the 10th problem, "What percent of 100 is 99.5?" is 105%, and to "what percent of 4 is 200" is 2%?
Rating:
Summary: This book adheres to the highest editorial standards
Review: With all due respect to the reviewer who found two errors in this book, these mistakes were corrected over 16 years ago. Our assumption is that he has a very outdated edition. The reviews of this book have been excellent and we are confident that it will help any student in pre-calculus.
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