But I would need to figure out how to provide students with a reliably correct version of it before using it for a course. The book's English grammar is good and mostly at an appropriate reading level. The statement of the examples and exercises tends to be a bit dry, but the grammar appears to be correct. I would prefer to see more cultural variety represented in this simple way. And, Mark and Janet are traveling home for Thanksgiving.
While I didn't encounter anything that I consider "offensive", I think some opportunities were missed, and this book could have been made to feel more inclusive. Overall, I like this book. I would absolutely consider using it in my courses, with some edits and notational corrections.
The book covers almost every topic one might use in the course and many topics which are frequently covered in the next course. Small lacking in comprehensiveness might be a treatments of simple absolute value equations or inequalities. Another small lacking is the absence of a 'review' chapter or appendix which is typical for this level of a course. Although almost all of the content is accurate, I scored this category lower 3 of 5 due to numerous 'errors' in the text, which are frequently typesetting errors.
However, a typesetting error becomes a math error when it makes the math incorrect. For instance, in section 1. While accurate in Firefox, this answer doesn't display at all using Google Chrome an issue to be dealt with later in interface and the typesetting is reversed in the PDF version showing the square root after the 7.
This type of error provides in a sense inaccurate information to students and several errors of this type are common throughout the text. If these were resolved, I would raise my rating here to 4 or 5, depending on if any other errors were left at that point. While the math content will never be obsolete as long as we require this style of algebraic learning in school, the text itself is currently obsolete merely based on the fact that it does not meet accessibility guidelines of the Federal government.
As such, the way the laws are currently written, it is my understanding that using the text in a course, even as a resource, is not allowable by the Federal government unless equitable accessible materials are also provided.
Similarly for accuracy above , while much all of the content is clear, I scored this category lower 3 of 5 due to numerous typesetting errors which will cause students to not find the content clear. These same type of issues, as described above in the accuracy section, provide unclear information to students and several issues of this type are common throughout the text. Additionally unclear are the lack of accessible content due to the missing alt tags on numerous images throughout the text, which frequently contain all the steps for solving a particular problem type.
As such, students using a screen reader will be unable to view any of these steps. If these types of issues were resolved, I would raise my rating here to 4 or 5, depending on other clarity issues that may still exist. The book is mostly consistent throughout, however, there are some minor inconsistencies such as the use of variables. For instance, in many sections the book will use x, y, a, b all throughout, and then in the homework Greek letters like alpha and beta appear.
This is literally a new alphabet and should probably be discussed somewhere in the book at least the preface or an appendix since this is not a prerequisite for the book. The text is pretty easy to divide into smaller reading sections, and reorganization should be fairly easy for most teachers, but certain sections will be challenging to reorder due to some implicit self-references.
The topics in the text are mostly presented in a logical and clear fashion. The discussion on absolute value seems disjointed between the first chapter and then 8 and 9, and it seems to overly assume that the student has studied and comprehended everything in 8 prior to studying 9 which is frequently not the case in basic algebra courses , specifically in reference to taking the square root of both sides of an equation and the result of an absolute value.
Additionally, while the subsections are numbered in the text, they are not listed in the table of contents and it is also difficult to determine which section you are in while in the midst of the text.
The text has significant interface issues, including the following. First, the PDF version of the book does not display content correctly. The PDF version of the book needs to be significantly revised or it should be removed from the site so that users can focus on the web-based version, which is more accurate. However, in the web-based version, many problems still exist.
For instance, some of the mathematical expressions are coded using MathML, which is not supported on numerous common web browsers including Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. With this in mind, at minimum the book should specify at least in the preface, which browser is recommended for best compatibility.
Further, many items throughout the book are images without an alt tag provided, making them completely unreadable to screen-readers and difficult to navigate for students using mobile devices. Additionally, there are "Video Solution" links provided which include embedded YouTube videos using a Flash-player embedding. Using Flash Player is outdated, and results in videos not playing in mobile browsers or browsers where Flash Player is not installed or blocked, which includes an increasing number of browsers.
Modern embedded features should be used, which would include the use of HTML5 videos. Finally, the videos provided are not properly subtitled, again as required by Federal accessibility standards. Although I have not read every sentence in the book, all of the grammar I saw seems to be correct. The text is not particularly insensitive to specific races or ethnicities that I am aware of, however, with a lack of emphasis placed on Federal accessibility standards, the text is not sensitive to students from different backgrounds who require implementation of the accessibility guidelines.
This book has a lot of potential and I hope to see improvements in the future! 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 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
There are no problems here. The book builds nicely on beginning concepts and progresses logically. The lack of the usual apparatus of a textbook table of contents, glossary, index, etc.
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. 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. 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. The book covers sections and topics that are appropriate for the math sequence at the community college level that I teach. The sequence in which the The sequence in which the topics appear is very appropriate for the level of audience. The book almost could be used in math 95 Intermediate Algebra as well, except a few more advanced topics such as introduction of basic function notations and logarithms.
The exercise sets are large enough for instructors to choose from and for students to gain practice from. I am impressed by the learning objectives as well as the sample review exercises and sample exams at the end of each chapter. It is a thoughtful book that includes many key features that I find useful: key take-aways, discussion board topics, note section, video solutions, and incorrect v.
The book itself is very comparable to a traditional textbook that I have seen in its layout and organizations. The only things I do not see are some kind of online homework system for instant feedback that can be used in an online course format and an index or glossary at the end of the book. Notations and explanations seem fairly accurate in this book, although I did not do a detailed line-by-line reading to check if there errors to the solutions.
The book also includes notations not commonly mentioned in a traditional textbook, for computer programming purposes or on a calculator. The book seems comparable to other textbooks that I have seen in its relevance and I could see it being useful for a long while.
The real-life applications provided in the book are general enough that changes would not be necessary. I believe the nature of the licensing allows easily adaptability for an instructor to include other examples as one sees fit. The book has good clarity overall and is very readable to students at this level, except in a few places.
For example, in section 1. However, how to subtract two integers are is not presented, yet it is referenced in an addition problem of two integers that involves the second number being negative.
This section would be so much clearer to the students and robust if subtracting integers is introduced in the same way as adding, with the visuals of the number line and clear examples provided. The book has really good consistency throughout sections and chapters.
The flow is consistent and clear in each section in terms of how concepts are introduced. The author uses consistent terminology as in most other textbooks. The only problem in consistency that I see is in the exercise sets and answers. For examples, fractions and radical notations are not always displayed using the same format and font sizes appear to be inconsistent as well. But this is more of an 'interface' problem. It does not hurt actually would be more helpful to have this method listed again in this section as this is where the method is really needed.
This is a strong aspect of the book in my opinion. Every section starts with learning objectives, followed by definitions and appropriate vocabulary, and easy to follow examples and steps are provided before students reach the practice exercises at the end of the section.
I particular enjoy the visual layouts, colors, and useful information such as common mistakes listed in a way that is visually clear and pleasing fashion. This area is the weakest aspect of the book. I read the book in different formats to find that the online format in Chrome is not compatible in many places — various mathematical symbols are simply missing as well as entire exercise sets not showing up. It can create confusion to the students. Viewing the book using the PDF version is not helpful, especially when it comes to mathematical symbols being not readable or lost.
The font sizes are not consistent either. This is surprising to me as I was expecting the PDF version to be the best in preserving the formatting for the students. I did not notice any grammatical error. The language used in the book is clear and appropriate to the level of students.
The book does not have as many culturally inclusive examples as other traditional textbooks. However, I could understand that the level of mathematical concepts are mostly algebraic and perhaps requires a little more work to write examples that include cultural relevance. It certainly would be beneficial to incorporate more culturally diverse examples for our diverse student population. Overall, it is a well written book and I really like the formats and the flow of the book.
I'm hoping to adopt this book for my algebra courses so viewing it from this perspective, I would have to figure out how to make the interface of the book much more friendly and usable to the students. I am happy to see that the quality of this book is quite good and I hope to find useful online tutorial and homework systems that can be incorporated to make this book a more complete one to use in an online format.
The book covers a wide variety of topics, in detail that I cover in my current Algebra Prep 1, Algebra Prep 2 and Algebra Prep 3 course. Each course is 8 weeks long so could use the text to use over the entire semester and half that is needed. A very good comprehensive book to help prepare students in all aspects who need to brush up on their skills before attempting College Algebra.
Although there were some areas where topics delved a little more deeply than students may be ready for; however, an instructor could easily pick and choose what they feel their students need. The book appears accurate throughout the chapters. The book uses color to determine step by step guidance which is extremely important to help my students follow along more easily while working on their own. They also appeared relevant in today's society with topics students may have an interest in.
All terminology was used appropriately and accurately among the book. The one area that seemed a little stand-offish is the step by step guides, I feel it's important for students in an Algebra Prep course to understand why we are doing what we are doing, not just a simple memorization of steps.
If a student can understand the why they are more apt to retaining vs. Each section started off with the section title, then the "Learning Objectives. The Learning Objectives are followed by step by step instructions with examples and "Try this! At the end of every section there is a Key Takeaway portion which leads into multiple topic exercises and solutions.
Each unit and subsection of each unit is broken down in such a way that as a teacher teaching 3 different 8 week courses, I could pick and choose what I need to cover for each course to meet the objectives easily. There were some instances where I personally would rearrange some topics simply based on what I know about my students and their needs, but overall the structure is fairly logical. Maybe it's just the online PDF version, but I'm struggling with the fraction section as many of the problems in the homework sets and within the lesson portion the fractions don't have fraction bars.
For example the problem asked to reduce , but there was no fraction bar to indicate what was what fraction. The only indication that you are working with fractions is the numbers appear in smaller text than the other numbers not represented in fractional form. When we hit the radical section, it appears the radical symbol comes after the number so it is unclear to a student what they may have to do or it's stated as "square root 36" this is also would be confusing to my students especially.
Although the book did use a variety of occupations, social standing, and students. There was a lot of "a man," "a woman," "a student. The text covers all areas of Elementary Algebra appropriately and covers some areas of Intermediate Algebra. There is so much material in this text that it could not possibly be covered in one semester. Of course since this text is open source, an For example, exponents, square root and the Pythagorean Theorem all occur in Chapter 1.
Rational expressions and radicals appear in Chapters 7 and 8. Solving quadratic equations, graphing parabolas and completing the square occur in the last chapter. There is no index or glossary that I could see. Therefore I had to page through the whole text to see where everything was located. All areas of Elementary Algebra that are normally covered did occur somewhere in the text but a person would need to search for it.
The part of the text that I liked the most was the excellent problem bank. There is a wide variety of problems, both rote problems and many application problems. I certainly would use this textbook as a resource for problem bank alone if nothing else.
The book seems accurate in all the material that is presented. The concepts are presented step-by-step in an easy to follow flow. Common mistakes were also shown side by side the correct mathematical steps. There was one case that parenthesis was used where it would have been more appropriate to use the multiplication sign. Other than that, the text seemed pretty error-free and unbiased. The material seemed up- to- date as far as the application problems.
The application problems would be easy to update when needed. The text was easy to follow as far as understanding. However, I think that some concepts, like square roots and the use of exponents in the first chapter were out of the correct order that they should be.
There were many references to use of technology and instructions of how to use that technology. The main problem that I saw was the order in which some of the concepts were introduced and used. The text was very consistent in it's framework. Each section start.
The material contained a variety of examples explained in great detail. At the end of each section came the Key Takeaways, followed by the Topic Exercises. The problem bank for most sections was huge with some excellent application problems. The answers for the problem bank then followed. Each chapter contained a Review along with a Review Problem Bank. Lastly came a Sample Exam along with the solutions to the Sample Exam. The text could easily by divided and reorganized and I would certainly suggest doing so.
I also would suggest dropping some concepts that fit better into an Intermediate Algebra text. There is no way that an instructor could cover all this material in one semester. This seems to be a bit of a problem as exponents and square roots normally do not come in the first chapter of an Elementary Algebra textbook to the extent that they were used here.
Basic exponent usage and simple square roots are more common in the first chapter. However, an instructor certainly could again pick and choose what they want to use.
Otherwise, the logic of other topics seemed to follow the order of other Elementary textbooks. There is a major problem here with type size in the problem bank. Some problems were easy to read and some problems were in so small a type size that they were hard to make out. Their activities include scuba diving, self-defense training, and hiking.
Barry has enjoyed teaching mathematics to a wide variety of students over the years. He began in the fi eld of adult basic education and moved into the teaching of high school mathematics in He taught high school math for 11 years, at which point he served as a K mathematics specialist for his county.
This work allowed him the opportunity to help promote the emerging NCTM standards in his region. In , Barry began the next portion of his career, having been hired to teach at Clackamas Community College. He maintains a strong interest in the appropriate use of technology and visual models in the learning of mathematics. Throughout the past 32 years, Barry has played an active role in professional organizations.
Don began teaching in a preschool while he was an undergraduate. He subsequently taught children with disabilities, adults with disabilities, high school mathematics, and college mathematics. Although each position offered different challenges, it was always breaking a challenging lesson into teachable components that he most enjoyed.
It was at Clackamas Community College that he found his professional niche. The community college allowed him to focus on teaching within a department that constantly challenged faculty and students to expect more. Under the guidance of Jim Streeter, Don learned to present his approach to teaching in the form of a textbook.
Don has also been an active member of many professional organizations. Above all, he encourages you to be involved, whether as a teacher or as a learner. Whether discussing curricula at a professional meeting or homework in a cafeteria, it is the process of communicating an idea that helps one to clarify it. After completing your transaction, you can access your course using the section url supplied by your instructor. Skip to main content x Sign In. However, the publisher has asked for the customary Creative Commons attribution to the original publisher, authors, title, and book URI to be removed.
Additionally, per the publisher's request, their name has been removed in some passages. More information is available on this project's attribution page. For more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for free, please see the project's home page. You can browse or download additional books there.
0コメント