Author Description

An excerpt from the Preface: THIS text presents a course in elementary mathematics adapted to the needs of students in the freshman year of an ordinary college or technical school course, and, of students in the first year of a junior college. The material of the text includes the essential and vital features of the work commonly covered in the past in separate courses in college algebra, trigonometry, and analytical geometry. The fundamental idea of the development is to emphasize the fact that mathematics cannot be artificially divided into compartments with separate labels, as we have been in the habit of doing, and to show the essential unity and harmony and interplay between the two great fields into which mathematics may properly be divided; viz., analysis and geometry. A further fundamental feature of this work is the insistence upon illustrations drawn from fields with which the ordinary student has real experience. The authors believe that an illustration taken from life adds to the cultural value of the course in mathematics in which this illustration is discussed. Mathematics is essentially a mental discipline, but it is also a powerful tool of science, playing a wonderful part in the development of civilization. Both of these facts are continually emphasized in this text and from different points of approach. The student who has in any sense mastered the material which is presented will at the same time, and without great effort, have acquired a real appreciation of the mathematical problems of physics, of engineering, of the science of statistics, and of science in general. A distinctly new feature of the work is the introduction of series of "timing exercises" in types of problems in which the student may be expected to develop an almost mechanical ability. The time which is given in the problems is wholly tentative; it is hoped, in the interest of definite and scientific knowledge concerning what may be exp