College Algebra (9th 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: 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: 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!!