Product Description

This book, intended for a graphing calculator optional trigonometry course, offers students the content and tools they will need to successfully master trigonometry. The authors have addressed the needs of students who will continue their study of mathematics, as well as those who are taking trigonometry as their final mathematics course. Emphasis is placed on exploring mathematical concepts by using real date, current applications and optional technology. Applied examples and exercises, allowing students to focus on real-life applications of mathematics. Selected examples feature traditional algebraic as well as optional graphing calculator solutions. We have taken great care to only use this format in examples where the graphing calculator can naturally be used to support and/or enhance the algebraic solution. For those interested in Mathematics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7266 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 552 pages

From the Back Cover
This book, intended for a graphing calculator optional trigonometry course, offers students the content and tools they will need to successfully master trigonometry. The authors have addressed the needs of students who will continue their study of mathematics, as well as those who are taking trigonometry as their final mathematics course. Emphasis is placed on exploring mathematical concepts by using real date, current applications and optional technology. Applied examples and exercises, allowing students to focus on real-life applications of mathematics. Selected examples feature traditional algebraic as well as optional graphing calculator solutions. We have taken great care to only use this format in examples where the graphing calculator can naturally be used to support and/or enhance the algebraic solution. For those interested in Mathematics.

About the Author

Marge Lial was always interested in math; it was her favorite subject in the first grade! Marge's intense desire to educate both her students and herself has inspired the writing of numerous best-selling textbooks. Marge, who received Bachelor's and Master's degrees from California State University at Sacramento, is now affiliated with American River College.

Marge is an avid reader and traveler. Her travel experiences often find their way into her books as applications, exercise sets, and feature sets. She is particularly interested in archeology. Trips to various digs and ruin sites have produced some fascinating problems for her textbooks involving such topics as the building of Mayan pyramids and the acoustics of ancient ball courts in the Yucatan.

When John Hornsby enrolled as an undergraduate at Louisiana State University, he was uncertain whether he wanted to study mathematics, education, or journalism. His ultimate decision was to become a teacher, but after twenty-five years of teaching at the high school and university levels and ten years of writing mathematics textbooks, both of his goals have been realized.

His love for teaching and for mathematics is evident in his passion for working with students and fellow teachers as well. His specific professional interests are recreational mathematics, mathematics history, and incorporating graphing calculators into the curriculum.

John's personal life is busy as he devotes time to his family (wife Gwen, and sons Chris, Jack, and Josh). He has been a rabid baseball fan all of his life. John's other hobbies include numismatics (the study of coins) and record collecting. He loves the music of the 1960s and has an extensive collection of the recorded works of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

David Schneider has taught mathematics at universities for over 34 years and has authored 36 books. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Oberlin College and a PhD in mathematics from MIT. During most of his professional career, he was on the faculty of the University of Maryland ¿ College Park. His hobbies include travel, dancing, bicycling, and hiking.

Customer Reviews

It'sa Great Book
I buy this Trigonometry Book to tutor my son. It's great. It's easy for me to keep track of what my son is studying at school. Thanks to the key on each odd number in the practice part and the illustration in the model part,I can step by step show my son how to study Trigonometry.
Phu Pham
Garden Grove, California

Frustrating and Incomplete
This text was required for my university Trig class. Other reviewers have argued that math text books are only supplemental to the material covered in class - that it's the teacher that makes the difference. If that's the case, without a good teacher, this book is nearly useless. Whether the authors are covering fundamentals or advanced concepts/calculations, most everything gets a very cursory, succinct treatment. Should you not understand something covered in class, this text likely will not help to clarify. If you are at all unfamiliar with Trigonometry (as I was going in to this class), this text is not intended to enhance your understanding.

Trigonometry is fun
I first learned trigonometry 26 years ago, and am currently a tutor in a Tutoring Center where math and English are the primary calls for our assistance. We started using this book on Trigonometry by Lial, Hornsby and Schneider last year, and it has been a real aid to all of us.

The chapters are designed with brief overviews, 'Chapter Openers', at the beginning of each. There are sample exercises in the explanations, as well as exercises in the problem sets keyed to specific application of examples. There are summary exercises that give review of mixed concepts, pull-quote boxes (here called 'Function Boxes') to highlight the reference aspect of the text, and useful chapter reviews to the same.

One thing that stands out about this text from the one I used so many years ago is the colour aspect. There are pictures, multi-coloured graphs and illustrations, and a general feel to the book that makes it visually worthwhile to look at. This book also takes advantage of the increasing sophistication of calculators - again, back when I took trigonometry, there were tables of data in the back for looking things up, since calculators (such as they were) had only add/subtract/multiply/divide functions.

The chapters go in a fairly standard pattern for trigonometry. Chaptes progress from basic Trigonometric Functions, defining triangular and angular ideas. This continues more in depth with Acute Angles and Right Angles, then proceeds to Circular Functions, introducing Radian Measures in for good measure. The fourth chapter introduces graphing ideas for the circular functions (sine, cosine, etc.), while the sixth chapter introduces the idea of the inverse circular and trigonometric functions. Other chapters include trigonometric identities (this always seemed to me to be like geometry or logic using trig functions), vectors, complex numbers, polar equations, exponential and logarithmic functions. Many of these concepts have direct application in engineering and other sciences.

This book is also geared for students who will be advancing on to calculus, and gives marginal notes on how trigonometry is used in calculus (so as to pre-empt the question, 'when am I ever going to use this?').

Actually, I found trigonometry to be among the more enjoyable math courses I ever took; together with geometry, it confirmed an early love of the discovery of patterns and symmetry in the very fabric of existence. This book reminds me of those early days of exploring ideas, and it is a pleasure to share these same ideas with new students via this text.