Precalculus: An Investigation of Functions
This text covers all areas of a standard Precalculus class, with or without trigonometry. There is no algebra review. There is an effective index and there are solutions to selected exercises in the back. There is no separate glossary, but key terms are in bold and defined within each section.
All of the problems that I worked, I found to be error-free and unbiased.
All of the applications problems that I read would maintain their relevancy. This text would not need to be updated regularly.
This text is written with excellent clarity. All symbolic notation is clearly explained. This is a text that students would be able to read and follow on their own. Formal notation and terminology is used and are explained very well.
The book is very consistent in terms of how each function is presented. First, an application is given of how the function is used in modeling. This gives the students an idea of the purpose of each function. Then symbolic notation is introduced for the function, followed by an in-depth study of graphs and modeling. In the Preface, the authors state that the rule of four is used. The functions are all addressed verbally, graphically, numerically, and algebraically. I found this to be true as I reviewed each one.
Each section is an appropriate length. Examples and definitions are clearly labeled. The text could easily be used for a Precalculus without trigonometry class and a Precalculus with trigonometry class. No algebra review is given, nor are there any appendices on algebra topics.
The organization, structure, and flow of this text is very logical and clear.
This text is easy to navigate. The table of contents is useful and the page headers are as well. However, I did find that the symbol for the set of real numbers did not get printed on page 23. This is the only distortion/display issue that I came across.
This text contains no grammatical errors that I found.
The examples and exercises in this book apply the mathematics to a wide variety of scenarios. None of them appear to be culturally insensitive or offensive.
The only thing I would like to see added to this text would be a basic algebra review, or some appendices on algebra that students could use to brush up on pre-requisite skills if necessary. I also would like to see an introduction to the difference quotient. Otherwise, I thought this was an excellent Precalculus text.