Essential Algebra

This no-nonsense guide provides students and self-learners with a clear and readable study of algebra's most important ideas. Tim Hill's distraction-free approach combines decades of tutoring experience with the proven methods of his Russian math teachers. The result: learn in a few weeks what conventional schools stretch into months.


• Teaches general principles that can be applied to a wide variety of problems.

• Avoids the mindless and excessive routine computations that characterize conventional textbooks.

• Treats algebra as a logically coherent discipline, not as a disjointed collection of techniques.

• Restores proofs to their proper place to remove doubt, convey insight, and encourage precise logical thinking.

• Omits digressions, excessive formalities, and repetitive exercises.

• Covers all the algebra needed to take a calculus course.

• Includes problems (with all solutions) that extend your knowledge rather than merely reinforce it.


Contents

1. A Few Basics

2. Exponents

3. Polynomials

4. Factoring

5. Linear & Quadratic Equations

6. Inequalities & Absolute Values

7. Coordinates in a Plane

8. Functions & Graphs

9. Straight Lines

10. Circles

11. Parabolas

12. Types of Functions

13. Logarithms

14. Dividing Polynomials

15. Systems of Linear Equations

16. Geometric Progressions & Series

17. Arithmetic Progressions

18. Permutation & Combinations

19. The Binomial Theorem

20. Mathematical Induction

21. Solutions


About the Author

Tim Hill is a statistician living in Boulder, Colorado. He holds degrees in mathematics and statistics from Stanford University and the University of Colorado. Tim has written self-teaching guides for Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, Precalculus, Advanced Precalculus, Permutations & Combinations, Mathematics of Money, and Excel Pivot Tables. When he's not crunching numbers, Tim climbs rocks, hikes canyons, and avoids malls.