Customer Reviews:
 This book sucks September 24, 2005
Mark Wieczorek (Brooklyn, NY United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I agree with C Towner, this book sucks.
For example, section 3.3, question 39: "ax^2 - (2a+1)x + (a+1) = 0 (a != 0)". The first step of the solution is: "[ax - (a+1)] (x-1) = 0". It takes several complex steps to get to that point, yet it's the first step of the solution. I asked some smart people how get to that point and they showed me. Believe me, it's not intuitive. The book really should have shown the intermediate steps.
In other examples, sometimes they factor, and sometimes they use the quadratic equation, but I can never figure which ahead of time. So again, I can't check my work simply because I used a different method from them.
The book is filled with things like that, and it only covers every other question. So how do I verify the answers to any of the even numbered questions? And it doesn't ever tell you why they did what they did. Math is all about understanding the why behind the what. So this book fails on multiple counts.
The answer key in the back of the original textbook covers all the same problems this book does. The only difference is this solution manual "shows the work," and as I pointed out, it's bad at that too.
But it will point you in the right direction when you're stuck, so I consider this book a bit of a necessity if you're struggling with the material (perhaps you have a bad teacher), but it's still pretty poor on the whole, so you'll still need some additional help from time to time.
To be honest, I'm glad I have this book, and I wouldn't want to take this class without it. I'm constantly finding I skipped obvious steps when I do the exercises, and I want to make these mistakes *before* I take the test. But, I suspect they used a computer program to solve the equations, and because of that the solutions can be non-intuitive.
Exercise your own discretion when buying this book.
It depends on what you are looking for January 18, 2005
C. Towner (Manassas VA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I purchased the solution manual for one of my students, hoping that it would help her with the even number problems. But it has only the answers to odd numbers problems. If you are looking for help with odd-number questions, it will help you. Otherwise it's only as good as the answers at the back of your textbook.
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