Precalculus

This book treats functions as the object of study while focusing on important mathematical concepts. In contrast to the organization of most precalculus texts, we introduce students te, linear, exponential, logarithmic, periodic, and power functions in the second chapter and develop the properties of these functions throughout the remainder of the text as mathematical concepts are explored. This allows us to emphasize the connections between mathematical ideas as we further the student's knowledge about a particular type of function.
Building the study of functions throughout the book, rather than isolating the study of a single type of function to one or two chapters, leads to a natural review of the properties of varions functions throughout the text. This organization also addresses a common student misconception that mathematics consists of unrelated bits of information which can be forgotten once a particular topic is finished.
Another common student misconception is that mathematics is useless and dry. To address this, we have made the study of applications an integral part of our text. Applications occur in the readings in three different ways: the focus of a section, an example used to illustrate a concept, and the motivation for a mathematical concept. Applications also occur in homework exercises, investigations, and projects. Every application has been researched and care has been taken to insure that the data given is accurate.

Contents

• An introduction to functions
• Families of functions
• New functios from old
• Polynomial and rational functions
• Trigonometric functions
• Applications of trigonometric functions
• Solving equations and fitting functions to data
• Getting ready for calculous
• Additional topics