This well-thought-out text, filled with many special features, is designed for a two-semester course in calculus for technology students with a background in college algebra and trigonometry. The author has taken special care to make the book appealing to students by providing motivating examples, facilitating an intuitive understanding of the underlying concepts involved, and by providing much opportunity to gain proficiency in techniques and skills.
Initial chapters cover functions and graphs, straight lines and conic sections, new coordinate systems, the derivative, using the derivative, integration and using the integral. The last four chapters focus on derivatives of transcendental functions, patterns for integrations, series expansion of functions, and differential equations.
Throughout, the writing style is clear, readable and informal. Examples are abundant and have complete worked solutions. Practice problems appear in the body of the text in each section; these are relatively easy and are intended to be worked by the student as soon as they are encountered. Each new type of example in the text is followed by a practice problem that allows the student to gain immediate reinforcement in applying the problem-solving technique illustrated by the example. Answers to all practice problems are given at the back of the book, many with worked-out solutions.
Other learning aids include the division of complex problem-solving processes into a series of step-by-step tasks, numerous exercises at the end of each section and a Status Check at the end of each chapter that helps students review what they have learned. Additional review exercises and a glossary, with definitions and page references, round out the book.