Elementary Algebra

Reviewed by John Salisbury, Mathematics Instructor, Rogue Community College on 8/21/16

Comprehensiveness rating: 4

The book covers all usual topics in an elementary algebra text book, commencing with integers and continuing through linear expressions, linear equations and inequalities, systems of linear equations, and other topics. The book concludes with a nice treatment of the solution of quadratic equations with the quadratic formula and introduces complex numbers. The treatment of factoring using guess and check and the ac-method, factoring by grouping, and special products is thorough and well presented. Any student who was taught from this book and covered all chapters would have a good grounding in the subject matter.

There is no glossary, index or table of contents, which does detract from an otherwise comprehensive book.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

I found no biases in the book. I found one misspelling but the book is well written and edited and substantially error-free. I found the presentation of the material to be objective and clear.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The subject of algebra is timeless, so there should be no short-term problem with relevance or longevity. There a numerous graphs which present current statistics and trends, but it would not be difficult to update these as the years go by. For example, the number of Americans over 65 or a period of recent years is presented. This could be made more current easily. Regular later editions of this book could be published to update the material in the years to come.

Clarity rating: 4

The language is simple straightforward and presented clearly. The terms are well defined. The presentation is not highly rigorous. There are almost no proofs or demonstrations of the truth of what is being presented, but this is not a higher level book so that does not really detract from the overall presentation. .

Consistency rating: 5

Terms are presented consistently and clearly. A glossary would be helpful to absolutely be able to check how the author defines and views the terms that he uses.

Modularity rating: 4

Sections and subsections of the book are presented in bite-sized chunks that would not overwhelm a student who has math anxiety or little previous experience with math. One way in which the book is thorough and distinctive is in the sheer number of problems. A teacher using this book would have numerous options in choosing easy or difficult problems to do. The lack of a table of contents or an index would definitely make looking up specific topics in the book problematic.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

There are no problems here. The book builds nicely on beginning concepts and progresses logically.

Interface rating: 3

The lack of the usual apparatus of a textbook (table of contents, glossary, index, etc.) make navigation in the book very difficult. Also, there are equations where the spacing is bad, at least in the pdf format that I read. These could be cleaned up in any final edition.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I found the text to be clear and almost entirely free from grammatical mistakes.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The book is not culturally insensitive or offensive. (Very few algebra books would be, I would think). I did notice that the names used in word problems are a little old fashioned, e.g., Mary, and maybe in a later edition more contemporary names could be introduced.

There were excellent suggestions for historical research that would be a great stimulant to further learning and study by an interested student. It would be helpful if there were more provocative and interesting problems and questions for gifted students to mull over