The Complete Idiot's Guide to Algebra

by W. Michael Kelley and Mike Kelley

Book Overview

The complete hands-on, how-to guide to engineering an outstanding customer experience! Beyond Disney and Harley-Davidson - Practical, start-to-finish techniques to be used right now, whatever is sold.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592576486
• ISBN13: 9781592576487
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Alpha Books
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.4" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Excellent introduction to basic algebra

Mathematical purists are opposed to injecting humor into teaching math, it is as if they simply want to pass their suffering on to subsequent generations. Unfortunately for their position, a spoonful of humor helps the mathematics go down. Kelley understands this very well, and while it is occasionally easy to consider the humor to be a bit childish or at best sophomoric, it does make this a better book. The coverage is what one typically finds in beginning algebra courses. *) Number fundamentals and basic properties such as the associative laws *) Fractions and how to perform arithmetic on them *) Variables and expressions *) Solving linear equations *) Solving linear inequalities *) Solving systems of simultaneous linear equations *) Matrices and operations on matrices *) The fundamentals of polynomials *) Factoring polynomials *) Equations involving radicals *) Quadratic equations and inequalities *) The basics of functions *) Graphing functions *) Rational expressions and solving rational expressions *) Interest, area, volume, distance and mixture problems If you are in need of a book that will help you learn basic algebra and can handle the occasionally stupid humor, then this is the book for you.

Look & Think no Further or Longer!!

Michael Kelley's books', that is the ones that pertain to both algebra and calculus, are written so well it's nearly to good to be true. If you're like me, you've been looking and nearly afraid to actually buy a book about algebra or calculus because you've also probably spent a ton of money on that so called "teach yourself" series or style only to slam the cover shut and toss it up on a bookshelf. Not with Michael's books you wont! Michael really did a fantastic job with his books and breaks everything down to a very simple step-by-step approach. For example; with Fractions, I'd be able to do fractions with a calculator and even then it was sketchy and adding fractions with a ruler could work for me as well, sometimes. Now I can pretty much look at a fraction and tell you what the answer is going to be and I'm talking about them in addition, subtraction, multiplication and even division of fractions. Its all so simple its almost stupid guys and gals. It truly is in the Method of Instruction. If you were also like me with wanting to learn algebra but those pesky X's and Y's got in the way and didn't make sense? Forget about that too partner, its actually small stuff. Again, Michael breaks it down to a very easy to follow format. I think the hardest part for people with Michael's books is to memorize the power rules. Math has specific rules, and that's really all it is that you're doing, is learning a new language with its own rules on how to do things. For me, I simply re wrote the first few chapters in MS Word and printed it out, I then simply looked at the power rules while I was reading forward and looking at the equations I was able to see every little change and detail taking place. Sure Michael explains it as he goes, that's just a funky way that I learned, for you it might be something else. Besides writing it down in my own words helps me retain it as well. If you learn like me, simply having someone tell you, "we'll just do it this way and you'll get the right answer" will never ever work! You probably need to know why you're getting the answer right and you probably need to know why you have to do it a specific way! Michael lays out all these so that there is no confusion, no frustration, and nothing is left in doubt. You will learn algebra, and you will learn calculus if you put in the small amount of time and effort to do so. Get Michael's books, They're money well spent & you'll not regret it. And unlike most other books on math, Michael has little jokes in the book to break up the "serious" stuff. I was NOT disappointed in the least bit when I got his books!

He Should Write Textbooks

A fourth-year college student, I stumbled across Mike Kelley's work a few years back after typing the phrase 'calculus help' into a search engine. Back then, I found Mike's animated tutorials to be understandable even to the math layman. Now, a future math educator myself, I still find Mike's work accessible, understandable, and undoubtedly the most humorous material out there- even more so than the few samples available on his website, calculus-help.com. It should be noted that this book should not be approached as a textbook(it is obviously not intended as such), but rather as a supplement to whatever textbook the student is using. The beauty of Mike's writing lies in his ability to cover nearly all relevant topics while avoiding all the proofs and pompous formal language (or 'gobbledy-gook', as he affectionately refers to it) present in most textbooks, all the while creating an enjoyable read whether you're new to algebra or not. The other great thing about this and Mike's other books is the exercises (cleverly entitled 'You've Got Problems') he provides and then proceeds to explain in a clear and understandable manner in a latter section of the book. Appropriately, the problems mirror his most recent discussions throughout the book as well as problems typical of most textbooks (though one is unlikely to find references to Frodo Baggins or the author's cat in the more 'scholarly' textbooks). The bottom line is that I recommend this and Mike's other books not only to fellow students but also to all current and future math educators. There should be no reason any student should not be able to earn an 'A' after reading this book and the state of math education in this country would be undoubtedly better if teaching methods effectively mirrored those of Kelley's.

Kelley's Book Should Be The Text Book

Mr. Kelley has written yet another fantastic math book. As a student, his books have helped me through all of my math classes. Kelley's name on a math book is like a seal of quality. Keep them books comin' Kelley!

The best algebra book ever

I am a Ph.D student from Sweden that was looking for a book that I could use to brush up om my mathskills. Believe it or not but math was not my favorite subject when I studied because I always found the subject a bit boring and blurry. This book is a splendid book since it deals with the subject in a easy way. This doesn't mean that the author ignores the difficulties of algebra but instead he explains them very well.There are not a lot of excercises in the book but the explanations of the subject makes this book a best buy.