Best Algebra & Trigonometry

1 Practical Algebra: A Self-Teaching Guide, Second Edition

Score: 93 / 100

Average Price: $13.72

With the aid of practical, real-life examples and applications, you'll learn: * The basic approach and application of algebra to problem solving. * The number system (in a much broader way than you have known it from arithmetic). * Monomials and polynomials; factoring algebraic expressions; how to handle algebraic fractions; exponents, roots, and radicals; linear and fractional equations. * Functions and graphs; quadratic equations; inequalities; ratio, proportion, and variation; how to solve word problems, and more. Authors Peter Selby and Steve Slavin emphasize practical algebra throughout by providing you with techniques for solving problems in a wide range of disciplines--from engineering, biology, chemistry, and the physical sciences, to psychology and even sociology and business administration. Practical Algebra If you studied algebra years ago and now need a refresher course in order to use algebraic principles on the job, or if youre a student who needs an introduction to the subject, heres the perfect book for you.

Reviews

"Whenever I got an answer wrong I would study the book’s answer, understand why I got the answer wrong, then re-do the problem. Here is a list of every error in the second edition, as far as I know: Page 3 – Division problem (d) at the bottom shows “1430 - 1364 = 66.” That should be “1430 - 1384 = 46.”. Page 17 – In frame 21 there is a sentence that begins “Do all multiplications and then all divisions first . Page 55 – In frame 5, the answer given for (b) is “7 and 3.” The correct answer is “none.”. Page 123 – In problem #25 (b) the numerator “K cubed - 1” must be changed to “K cubed + 1” in order to get the answer the book gives. Page 205 -- The first sentence says, “If this came out correctly, go to frame 15.” It should say, “…go to frame 14.”. Page 218 – On the graph, line (4) is shown as “2y – x + 7 = 0.” That should be “2y + x – 7 = 0.”. Page 244 – The answer to problem 4 (a) begins with a “z”. Page 273 – Another reviewer wrote that the answer to problem (c) is mistakenly given as “1016” when it should be “508.” My book, however, gives the correct answer of “508 times per second.”. Page 274 – In the frame 11 inverse proportion table the “66 2/3” should be “666 2/3.”. Page 280 – The answer to problem (e) contains “(joint, inverse variation)” when it should simply be “(joint variation).”. Page 309 -- The answer to the candy problem (d) contains ".50x + 60(x+5)"."

"High quality and delivered on time."

"The best way to learn anything is to learn it from its roots and that's exactly what this book does."

"Great value for the price."

"need additional sample problems."

"Better the the school textbook!"

"for high school students with no books."

"I have never had algebra before and can not understand how I could learn it from this book."

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2 Algebra: Structure and Method, Book 1

Score: 89 / 100

Average Price: $87.56

Grade: 9 Material Type: Student Materials Format: Hardcover, 816 Pages ISBN-13/EAN: 9780395977224 ISBN-10: 0395977223 Product Code: 213326 National/State: National Copyright Year: 2000.

Reviews

"It shows the problem and how to work out the problem to get to the right answer."

"The contents and sequence of topics are so arranged that it is easy to learn."

"Very good well explained for non maths people like."

"The book I wish I had in middle school!"

"It is great!"

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3 Calculus: Early Transcendentals

Score: 80 / 100

Average Price: $62.77

With CALCULUS: EARLY TRANSCENDENTALS, Seventh Edition, Stewart conveys not only the utility of calculus to help you develop technical competence, but also gives you an appreciation for the intrinsic beauty of the subject. This means that Calculus 7e and Calculus: Early Transcendentals 7e have the same number of chapters, allowing for a single Multivariable text rather than separate Early Transcendentals and Late Transcendentals versions. In addition, new collections of more challenging exercises called "Problems Plus" have been added, reinforcing concepts by requiring students to apply techniques from more than one chapter of the text. Updated: Tools for Enriching Calculus--a free, online, interactive resource that allows calculus students to work with animations that deepen their understanding of key concepts by helping them visualize the concepts they are learning--has been updated with new problems and a new Flash design that is more visually appealing and engaging to students.

Reviews

"This book can save you money at some schools as this edition of the book can cover Calculus I, II, and III; you could end up spending over $300 if you buy the two volume edition of the book. What I also like about this book is how all the sections seems to come together and magnify."

"It's a calculus textbook....so not very exciting, but happy with this purchase."

"In all, I would say someone making an honest effort could learn the subject matter from this text while supplementing any of the great free online resources that are out there (such as Khan Academy)."

"I used this book for AP Calc AB in High School and also for MTH 161 and 162 in college. So by all means, this book is great quantity wise, but the quality of the the examples and practice problems might disappoint you if you don't have the help form someone who knows what they are talking about."

"However, there is the option of buying it used, and if you don't intend to do all three courses of calculus (or you spend a lot of time carrying your books around), it may make sense to buy the book in parts -- it's also sold in Calc 1/Calc 2/Multivariable sections."

"I'm not sure why schools use this textbook when there are definitely more "learner friendly" books available."

"I am not personally taking calculus however I took one look at this book and I couldn't resist."

"Great book if you already know Calc, terrible if you are learning for the first time."

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Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Score: 94 / 100

Average Price: $19.49

However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (like undecidability, recursion, and 'strange loops') accessible and remarkably entertaining. Escher, Kurt Gödel: biographical information and work, artificial intelligence (AI) history and theories, strange loops and tangled hierarchies, formal and informal systems, number theory, form in mathematics, figure and ground, consistency, completeness, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, recursive structures, theories of meaning, propositional calculus, typographical number theory, Zen and mathematics, levels of description and computers; theory of mind: neurons, minds and thoughts; undecidability; self-reference and self-representation; Turing test for machine intelligence.

Reviews

"This was a very influential book for me in high school and college, and I had the privilege of being able to introduce my son to it."

"For those of you who want to know about how things are this is a must read."

"So far a fantastic book."

"Book in great shape."

"Condition of book was good, not great, slightly worse than described but totally acceptable."

"arrived safe and sound."

"A full mental meal, intellectually challenging."

"I liked Hofstadter’s search for the seat of consciousness, in humans, ant colonies, and (as he attempts to claim) self-referential formal systems. The discussion of this application to computer science and artificial intelligence was tremendously interesting, though a bit outdated. Apparently, Hofstadter thinks he needs to take his reader by the hand, start them off with some simpler concepts to build a foundation of knowledge, drag them step-by-step through his reasoning and thought process, entertain every conceivable tangent, and then incessantly repeat his core beliefs in slightly different ways. This may not be a problem to other readers, but unfortunately, I am the kind of person who cannot stop reading a book once I have started, no matter how painful the process is. Even though their names comprise two thirds of the title, GEB only references Bach and Escher when their work is useful to illustrate a more abstract concept of formal systems. He’ll present some obscure puzzle or formula and tell the reader to figure it out on their own, oh and by the way the answer is really obvious. This pedagogical style may be useful to some readers but personally, I don’t need to understand number theory on a usable level to be able to discuss it and think about it on the meta-levels. He uses this approach with genetics as well, which I am personally more versed in, trying to explain it on a simple level he calls “Typogenetics” but the effect was mainly finding myself bewildered on a topic with which I am familiar. At first, I thought these dialogues would break up the dense content of this book nicely, but after a few of them I found them redundant, tiring, and even more arrogant than the chapters, if possible. He breaks numerous expensive record players owned by the Crab just to prove a point and is constantly patronizing and antagonizing his “friend” Achilles. I’m just not sure that those few sections justify the commitment necessary to get into Hofstadter’s tangled, gabbing mind and buy into his unreciprocated bromance with Gödel. Finally, here’s some practical advice for someone considering buying this book or someone who already owns it and is debating reading it or throwing it in the trash: Read the dialogue prior to Chapter XVIII (which was only “adapted” by Hofstadter) and the final three chapters of the book, excluding the remaining dialogues, and you should get a pretty good ides of GEB’s core, without an excessive amount of filler."

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Euclid's Elements

Score: 98 / 100

Average Price: $27.78

The classic Heath translation, in a completely new layout with plenty of space and generous margins. If you want your students to really grapple with Euclid, this is the edition to choose.

Reviews

"The pages lay flat when the book is open which is really nice."

"I have wanted a copy of The Elements for years."

"Looking forward to learning from one of histories great textbooks."

"classic."

"If you're a math dork, then you will be happy with this."

"I only have to comment that this book deserves to be both into any student's and any mathematician's library, and not only for encyclopaedic reasons."

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The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't

Score: 92 / 100

Average Price: $15.67

One of Wall Street Journal 's. Best Ten Works of Nonfiction in 2012 New York Times Bestseller “Not so different in spirit from the way public intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith once shaped discussions of economic policy and public figures like Walter Cronkite helped sway opinion on the Vietnam War…could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade .”. — New York Times Book Review "Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of a New Machine for the 21st century ." Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read. Baseball, weather forecasting, earthquake prediction, economics, and polling: In all of these areas, Silver finds predictions gone bad thanks to biases, vested interests, and overconfidence.

Reviews

"Longer review: I'm an applied business researcher and that means my job is to deliver quality forecasts: to make them, persuade people of them, and live by the results they bring. But we're not very good at it, and fall prey to cognitive biases and other systemic problems such as information overload that make things worse. However, we are simultaneously learning more about how such things occur and that knowledge can be used to make predictions better -- and to improve our models in science, politics, business, medicine, and so many other areas. For example, on p. 162: "What happens in systems with noisy data and underdeveloped theory - like earthquake prediction and parts of economic and political science - is a two-step process. Second, this noise pollutes journals, blogs, and news accounts with false alarms, undermining good science and setting back our ability to understand how the system really works." Of course this makes the book fascinating to generalists, geeks, and breadth thinkers, but perhaps more importantly, I think it serves well to develop reusable intuition across domains. The third non-fitting audience will be experts who desire depth in one of the book's many topic areas; it's not a technical treatise for them and I can confidently predict grumbling in some quarters."

"The anecdotes and exposition are fantastic, and I wish we could make this book required reading for, say, everyone in the country. This kind of pundit chatter, as Silver notes, tends to be insanely inaccurate. Weather prediction has gotten lots better over the last fifty years, due to highly sophisticated, large-scale supercomputer modeling. Nate Silver made a living playing online poker for a few years. When the government tightened the rules, the less savvy players ("fish") stopped playing, and he found he couldn't make money any more. Rational employees may have less career risk when they "bet with the consensus" than when they buck a trend: this may increase herding effects and makes bubbles worse. Note: Nate pointedly does not claim that one can make money on Intrade by betting based on FiveThirtyEight probabilities. But he stresses that Intrade prices are themselves probably heavily informed by poll-based models like the ones on FiveThirtyEight. Climate prediction: prima facie case for anthropic warming is very strong (greenhouse gas up, temperature up, good theoretical reason for former causing latter). But lots of good reason to doubt accuracy of specific elaborate computer models, and most scientists admit uncertainty about details."

"I do not teach statistics for a living, but I was able to follow Nate Silver's hypotheses, explanations, and formulas; his reasoning was clear."

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Calculus: Early Transcendentals

Score: 88 / 100