Available:*
Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000004013110 | QA303 F86 1998 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
Searching... | 30000004013151 | QA303 F86 1998 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
Searching... | 30000004013193 | QA303 F86 1998 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
The central theme of this book and course is functions as models of change. The authors emphasize that functions can be grouped into families and that functions can be used as models for real-world behavior. Because linear, exponential, power, and periodic functions are more frequently used to model physical phenomena, they are introduced before polynomial and rational functions. Once introduced, a family of functions is compared and contrasted with other families of functions.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Connally, Hughes-Hallett, Gleason, and colleagues offer in this preliminary edition a precalculus text along the lines of the well-known Calculus, by Deborah Hughes-Hallett and colleagues (1992). Though covering most of the traditional topics of their subjects, for better or worse (this point is hotly debated in the mathematics community), the style of these texts is highly intuitive, informal, even chatty. For example, this precalculus text uses 11 pages of dense text to discuss the relationship between functions whose graphs differ by a horizontal or vertical shift. Traditional works cover this material in a third to half the pages, with thousands of fewer words, and far more equations and graphs. Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is its exercises. Indeed, six of the 11 pages mentioned above are exercises, and many of these connect to a variety of applications. Topics covered include linear, exponential, logarithmic, trigonometric, polynomial, and rational functions; composites and inverses; vectors; and polar coordinates. Traditional topics not covered include limits and systems of equations. Suitable for lower-division undergraduates. J. D. Fehribach Worcester Polytechnic Institute
