CLEP Precalculus (CLEP Test Preparation)

I am thoroughly un-impressed with this book. Explanations of fundamental and even basic concepts are hazy and tough to interdigitate with mentally. The book launches into the Precalculus review at an advanced level - if you don't already know a significant amount of Precalculus you'll be absolutely lost from the start.

Here are my recommendations for any fellow students wishing to CLEP Precalculus. It IS a very doable test. PLEASE - do not let the practice tests in this book deceive you!! The 3 practice tests are pythonically hard. If I would have paid attention to them I would never have taken the Clep. I just took the actual Clep yesterday and passed easily. The actual Clep is far easier than REA's practice tests, Peterson's practice tests, and the official Clep Study Guide practice test.

The book that I found extremely useful in prepping for this Clep was Precalculus Demystified. I got it right here from Amazon. Infinitely more helpful than this REA...Read more

This book works out problems said to be similar to the CLEP test, but doesn't give problems for the reader to work out, except for the practice tests themselves. It's similar to getting ready for a race by watching other people run; looks easy until you must do it. If you need a good review of the material, or need to learn the topics in the test, this is not the book to use.

I can't recommend this book. It does nothing that other books don't do far better.

The review questions are needlessly difficult--not in a way that challenges you to learn--but in a way that is just peculiar and causes you to become even more confused. The author frequently throws "curveballs" into questions that don't feel relevant to the material and seem inappropriate for what should be general review text for a broad audience. This would be fine if the book contained a large number of questions that "ramped up" from easy to hard, but that is not the case here. I realize that the book is intended to be a "quick overview" rather than an exhaustive course, but I found it to be unsatisfactory for any purpose because it is written in a way that seems so difficult and insular.

The worked solutions are typically missing steps at key points, leading you to wonder how the author got from Point A to Point B. I know this is a common criticism of math texts, but it...Read more