What do you think?
Rate this book
Algebra 1
this is the 2006 TE
704 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
4 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 30, 2016
I am a tutor to many Algebra 1 students, including some who take algebra with me for h.s. credit in lieu of taking it at school. I am very familiar w/myriad algebra texts.
This book is a jazzier version of the 1994 publishing by Stanley Smith under the Addison Wesley label (owned by the same publishing house as Prentice Hall). I wrote in a review of the 1994 book that my only suggestion would be to take out Chapters 14 & 15 on probability and trig, as they don't really belong in an Alg 1 book. Coincidentally, this book has done exactly that. Hooray!
The font, colors, typography, and imagery are more eye-catching than the bland 1994 book, and there are fewer problems of the purely "drill, drill" variety. They've replaced some of those problems with more challenging application problems toward the end of each assignment, but there are still sufficient problems for assigning many practice & drill problems. In fact, most of the problems are exactly the same as in the 1994 text.
Overall, it's a nice improvement over the older text. They made it more visually and otherwise interesting *without* sacrificing content, as so many algebra texts do. This alone sets it apart from the majority of US-published algebra texts out there. (I generally believe the quality of a text is inversely proportional to the number of pretty pictures in it.) :)
With so many terrible Algebra 1 textbooks floating around, I am never short on clients for my tutoring services. I continue to buy up used copies of this book whenever possible to give to my students and will continue to refer my students to algebra texts authored by Stanley Smith.
This book is a jazzier version of the 1994 publishing by Stanley Smith under the Addison Wesley label (owned by the same publishing house as Prentice Hall). I wrote in a review of the 1994 book that my only suggestion would be to take out Chapters 14 & 15 on probability and trig, as they don't really belong in an Alg 1 book. Coincidentally, this book has done exactly that. Hooray!
The font, colors, typography, and imagery are more eye-catching than the bland 1994 book, and there are fewer problems of the purely "drill, drill" variety. They've replaced some of those problems with more challenging application problems toward the end of each assignment, but there are still sufficient problems for assigning many practice & drill problems. In fact, most of the problems are exactly the same as in the 1994 text.
Overall, it's a nice improvement over the older text. They made it more visually and otherwise interesting *without* sacrificing content, as so many algebra texts do. This alone sets it apart from the majority of US-published algebra texts out there. (I generally believe the quality of a text is inversely proportional to the number of pretty pictures in it.) :)
With so many terrible Algebra 1 textbooks floating around, I am never short on clients for my tutoring services. I continue to buy up used copies of this book whenever possible to give to my students and will continue to refer my students to algebra texts authored by Stanley Smith.
June 11, 2011
stupid book. and mrs shahinahin
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews