Publisher's Synopsis
This new-focus text is intended for all students in their freshman year of college who do not need remedial work in high school mathematics. Both formal demonstrations and problem solving with extensive applications to the physical sciences are stressed throughout. Use of the microcomputer as a working tool is emphasised throughout the book. This text should be useful in courses such as General College Mathematics, Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, and Pre-Calculus.;Eight fundamental processes (which are used throughout all of mathematics) are identified and developed in the book: conjecture, logical argumentation, formal demonstration, algorithmic thinking, correspondence, enumeration, limiting processes and approximation.;Discussions, examples and problems are gathered from algebra, geometry, trigonometry, analysis and discrete mathematics, exposing students, it is argued, to more interesting material than is encountered in standard mathematics texts. The focus of the book is on how one arrives at the result or solution, not whether the answer is right or wrong.;The preface of the book offers the following comment: "Even if students are not entirely convinced of the usefulness of mathematics in their own programme of studies, it is still possible for them to find mathematics interesting, provided they are exposed to a suitable selection of topics. It is unjustifiable to make students sit through one more class of the same kind of drudgery that they have seen since their freshman year in high school and thereby deny them exposure to intrinsically more interesting material just because they are not mathematics, science or engineering majors."
