Thread: Assessment test/algebra

I can't recommend any specific books. However, an assessment test is just that: it's meant to figure out what courses you need to start with. This is quite common in community colleges, where they have several levels of math courses, some without college credit, that are designed to get you up to speed. What math you need depends on what you eventually want to do in college. For example, I teach an elementary statistics course that is required by all the local nursing programs, and it requires a "college algebra" course as a pre-requisite. Some of my students have been out of school for 20 years, and have taken remedial math courses, then the "college algebra" (which is really high school algebra II), and then the stat course.

It doesn't matter how long you've been out of school if you have the motivation. Many of my students in their mid-thirties and older do much better than the ones in their late teens and low-twenties. A college degree is mostly a matter of perseverance, and I include all graduate and professional degrees as well.

Try "Algebra the easy way", available on Amazon for $10.

The best books I've used have been the "For Dummies" series (honestly, that's what I used before I took my SAT). I am not sure if they have an Algebra for Dummies... but that's something to look into.

Originally Posted by Roy/SATX

Some of my students have been out of school for 20 years, and have taken remedial math courses, then the "college algebra" (which is really high school algebra II), and then the stat course.

Can they assess out of college algebra? I didn't have to take college algebra to take community college stats, or calculus for that matter. I would have been irritated if I had been forced to repeat a class covering material I already knew. Intermediate algebra was a prereq equivalent to algebra 2, but that wasn't transferable.

There is a book called "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Algebra" that I found to be both amusing and informative. I bought a copy to steal teaching ideas from it to use with my students.

I've found that many of these books are available at the public library. I've enjoyed checking them out and looking through them.