Algebra and Trigonometry 1st Edition

Axler has written two very similar textbooks, "Algebra & Trigonometry" and "Precalculus". As far as I can tell, they are roughly equivalent (containing much of the same text) with the main difference between them being the order of some of the sections. You might think they form a sequence, but they don't, and I don't think there's any reason to own both.I like Sheldon Axler's books a lot. I feel he has a good way of explaining things at just the right level for the material that he's presenting. He gives you advice on how to read a math book that is appropriate to students at the level of the material he's teaching. He occasionally makes you do a little work to make sense of the reading, but I think he does it in a calculated manner, making you learn to make little leaps of understanding now because he knows you'll have to make bigger leaps later on when you study more advanced subjects.Axler avoids trying to teach you things that he doesn't think you need to study, because he also teaches more advanced courses and he knows what you'll need later and what you won't. I appreciate an author who has the integrity to include only what he thinks should be taught, rather than filling his book with more material than any course could cover in order to avoid having to decide what's really important.Since he treats you like an adult, Axler tells you right there in the book what he is and isn't going to teach you and why he decided to do things in a particular way. For example, in this book, he doesn't think you need to know Cramer's rule, and he tells you why, and he explains why Gaussian elimination (which he does teach you) is a better tool that you're more likely to use in the future.This book teaches you a particular variant of polynomial division which, as he explains, isn't the way it's usually presented but it makes it very clear what it is that you're doing and why it works; in comparison, the traditional method seems more like a magical procedure to be memorized. (Once you learn the method that Axler teaches and you've done the problems he gives you, it's actually quite easy to figure out the traditional method by yourself since now you know how it works.) By the way, understanding this will come in handy when you read his book Linear Algebra Done Right, which uses the division algorithm as a crucial part of some proofs.Personally I didn't need to read most of this book. I bought it to learn a few things that my courses in high school had skipped, and as a reference for some information (mainly trigonometry equalities) that I didn't remember. I was impressed with it all the same, though, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who is reviewing the material or learning it for the first time.For those learning this for the first time: In my opinion, this is not a very exciting part of your mathematical education. Axler does a good job with it, but it's still a bit pedestrian. You want to get through this and get on to mind-blowing stuff that comes next: calculus and linear algebra.

Book was in perfect condition and I got it for a really cheap price. I'm glad I was able to get it so cheaply compared to my college's bookstore price.

Heavy duty text. That is, I would never use this text at the High School or Community College level. I have been retired for 20 years play around with it using Mathematica.

Great buy! Great cost! Shipping was faster than notified which was great as it was for my freshman at university.

Excellent product in excellent condition. Save me over $100!

I'm collecting a few good math books both for self study reference and for teaching my kids in the future. I have a PhD in CS, but math is not my forte compare to my father, who's a math professor. So I'm able to survey a few college algebra books. This book is by far the best compare to some other popular ones by Beecher and Blitzer. The one by Sullivan is OK, I would recommend as well. The other two should not be used at all.We can look at mathematics from different perspectives at different levels. While teaching kids, we generally do not require rigor or need to teach them why math is the way it is rather than how to do math. But having gone through college and grad school, looking back I wished starting from the college level, we would put more emphasis on rigor and why math is the way it is. Knowing how to do math is not enough. It limits us to existing ideas, because we are bound by existing rules. Without knowing why the rules are the way they are, we'll never come up with new rules (ideas).Why are there rational and irrational numbers? Are there points on the real line that's not represented by the set of real numbers (rational + irrational)? Why are complex numbers not part of the real numbers? These questions may seem obvious to ask, but they have fundamental importance on the concept of limit, and calculus. While these questions are discussed in Axler's book, they are simply absent among other books. What's worse is the style of presentation of some other books. There are too much distraction (with charts and pictures) on the page in other books, and Axler's book focus on the content. The exercises and problems are interesting, and some can be challenging to test students solid understanding of the concepts. The solutions are shown step by step unlike some books simply gave answers.College algebra is not hard, but it seems most books have gotten it wrong. This book is a gem among the rocks.

Apparently, Sheldon Axler is not only a leading mathematician, but a pretty decent writer and teacher.The book's easy-to-read chapters explain introductory algebraic principles quite well, and the problems at the end of each section progress nicely from fairly straightforward problems to more challenging ones. He sprinkles some funny and interesting comics/pictures here and there, just to keep the reader interested. I personally read through this text and used it to help tutor my classmates and others at my local high school so they could understand math better.The author also provides solutions (not just answers) to odd numbered problems at the end of each section. This helps tremendously with students who want to do extra work and check to see if they're understanding is on track.You can tell that Axler didn't rush to write this book, or merely let one of his teaching assistants put it together- I believe he took his time with it, because that the quality of the book shows.