Essential Algebra: a Self-teaching Guide

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 methods of his old-school Russian math teachers. The result: learn in two 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 solutions to all problems.

Contents
1. To the Student
2. A Few Prereqs
3. Exponents
4. Polynomials
5. Factoring
6. Linear & Quadratic Equations
7. Inequalities & Absolute Values
8. Coordinates in a Plane
9. Functions & Graphs
10. Straight Lines
11. Circles
12. Parabolas
13. Types of Functions
14. Logarithms
15. Dividing Polynomials
16. Systems of Linear Equations
17. Geometric Progressions & Series
18. Arithmetic Progressions
19. Permutation & Combinations
20. The Binomial Theorem
21. Mathematical Induction
22. Problems & Solutions

About the Author
Tim Hill is a data miner and private math tutor based in Las Vegas, Nevada. When he's not crunching numbers, Tim plays poker, hikes canyons, and avoids malls.