Pre-Calculus Transformed highlights the under-explored role of transformations in visualizing, interpreting, and understanding pre-calculus concepts. This text develops function composition to expand transformations far beyond constant translations and dilations. Students discover underlying patterns, bring out connections between otherwise seemingly unrelated ideas, and learn to more easily analyze problems that initially appear complicated. Overall, this text provides an interconnected and dynamic pre-calculus experience with a wide range of problems from basic practice to those requiring creativity, insight and meaningful connections.
While Pre-Calculus Transformed integrates computer algebra system (CAS) technology throughout, its concepts can be grasped without a CAS. However, routine CAS use in the text enables students to investigate, recognize patterns, and make broader predictions about function behavior, while appropriately maintaining their focus on critical problem characteristics without losing themselves in algebraic manipulations that are explored independently elsewhere.
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