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Lunch » Tags » Books » Reviews » Integrated Calculus: Calculus with Precalculus and Algebra

Integrated Calculus: Calculus with Precalculus and Algebra

1 rating: 1.0

A book by Laura Taalman

The only text on the market that truly integrates calculus with precalculus and algebra in a two-semester course appropriate for math and science majors, Integrated Calculus uses a student-friendly approach without sacrificing rigor. Students learn about … see full wiki

Tags: Books, Mathematics

Author: Laura Taalman

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company

1 review about Integrated Calculus: Calculus with Precalculus...

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Too much precalculus and not enough calculus for me to consider adoption

Jan 13, 2007

by CharlesAshbacher
posted in Cafe Libri: Reviewing Books & More

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When I was looking through this book, the question that kept popping up and remaining in my mind was "Where is the market for this book?" While most potential textbooks for a college course in calculus are approximately 1000 pages in length, this one is a "slim" 900 pages. Furthermore, as the name implies there is a great deal of coverage of basic algebra and precalculus topics. Therefore, at the end, there is a minimum coverage of integration.
The initial chapter covers such basics as the Cartesian plane, set theory, inequalities and equations. Some of this is material that my daughter is learning in her ninth grade class. In the following chapter, the topics are the basics of functions. What they are how they are combined and how to determine when they can be inverted. Therefore, a topic considered traditional to calculus does not appear until page 135.
Chapters numbered four through eleven each describe a set of functions, how they are used and how to take their derivatives. While this material is certainly necessary, in my opinion too much ink is spent in the precalculus realm. My basic assumption is that students in calculus already know things like the basics of the trigonometric functions and it is best to move forward and teach them calculus.
Integration does not appear until page 713, leaving less than two hundred pages in which to cover all of the main facets of integration. This is not enough to cover all that I consider essential for the second course in the calculus sequence.
However, that aside, the pedagogical approach is sound. Taalman's expository style is one that students will relate too and learn from. The worked examples are clear and topical so that the students will generally have no trouble understanding them. If you have a reason to teach precalculus and calculus simultaneously, then this book is your ideal. However, when I teach calculus, it is calculus only, so it is a book that I would not seriously consider as a text.

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