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OffTopic > College Algebra

#69677 - jake2431 - Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:47 am

Hey, I know some people in here are really into math. I am taking a college algebra course online and we don't have a textbook for the class(the teacher just gives up examples online). This isn't a very good way for me to learn so I was wandering if someone had experience with some books on this topic. What in your opinion is the best easy to understand book on the subject?

#69761 - Chaotic Harmony - Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:27 pm

It kinda depends on the type of Algebra Course you're doing. For group theory and stuff in first year, I found Durbin's "Modern Algebra" to be really really useful - after that I just used lecture notes - a classmate of mine wrote these up for a linear algebra course, and I thought they were really helpful : http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/coursework/211/211.pdf

If all else fails, in general, the undergraduate Springer Series books are wonderful for theory, and the Schaum's Outline books are great for example problems.
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#69764 - jake2431 - Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:39 pm

Alright, thanks for the help!

#69766 - jake2431 - Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:42 pm

Hey, I just wanted to add that I looked at your classmates paper. It's really well done. I'm printing it out :)

#69772 - Chaotic Harmony - Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:39 pm

No problem, happy to be of assistance :)

There's a tonne of free maths resources out there if you know where to look - have a look at these:

http://www.geocities.com/alex_stef/ (Wide URL)
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/

[edit] The first site was down when I went to get the link - so I got the google cache instead. It actually seems to be back up again, though.
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#69776 - jake2431 - Wed Feb 01, 2006 8:17 pm

Ah, that looks great. Yeah, purple math is a good site to. For some reason I learn better from books than I do from online resources so I print a lot(I don't understand it).