Precalculus: Graphical, Numerical, Algebraic

Will This book Show You Enough for Pre-Cal?

First off let me invite you to recognize that different schools teach different parts of the mathematical spectrum for this course. But a very comprehensive course will essentially review the end of algebra II, some trig., then introduce some parts of calculus to give you an idea where your gonna be going with this stuff. Really though one could say it's just advanced algrebra dealing with new forms of functions. Also let's understand that this book is not meant to be a textbook and thus will not be loaded with practice problems. That's not generally included in a study aid/self teaching guide like this. However, I do admit this book was short on the examples as well as practice problems, so I say this tongue in cheek. So how does this book stack up? It's great! Really it is. It covers nearly everything that you'll be looking at in Pre-calculus. One thing it does skip though is Polynomial Functions. It does cover polynomials, even the fundamental theorem of algebra, but not the functions of polynomials. I've noticed that Forgotten Calculus (Barbara Lee) as well as Pre-Calculus Demystified (Rhonda Huettenmueller) do cover these. For those of you looking for help in Trigonometry there is a small section here, which is helpful for most of trig. However when you get to identities this book won't be too helpful because it doesn't even cover the half-angle identities, sum-product identities, nor the very basic quotient identities. The last of these is almost too obvious to worry about (you'll see when you get a basic lesson on trig.), however the other two are very useful tools for proving two trig functions as being equivalent to each other. Also this section of the book should have several examples as the only way to really get to know how to work identities is to do large quantities of them, yet start doing them several examples are helpful. However you could always buy a solutions manual for trig textbooks that cover these so you could see several worked out exampl...