HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA COMPLETE 300 DEFART/ENT OF EDUCATION JUN 26 1025 LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSE Y PREFACE That there are some good text-books in beginning algebra may be freely granted, and yet those who are familiar with the work of first-year high-school students know that many fail in that subject. Several conditions contribute to these failures, but there is no doubt that the text-books in use are partly responsible. Extensive experience in teaching the subject and in supervising the work of other teachers has convinced the authors that a book can be made that is distinctly better in a number of respects than any beginning text heretofore published. Accordingly, the aim has been to make a book in which the explanations are so clear and the exercises and problems so well graded that a student of average ability, ambition and industry, could by private study work through it with little or no assistance from a teacher. With this idea in mind the authors during some years kept notes of the more significant experiences in teaching and supervising the subject. Gradually a manuscript was developed, and the material, on mimeographed sheets, used as a regular text in several classes. While it was being tested in this way the results were checked, exercises and problems re-arranged as seemed desirable, and the whole work revised in the light of the response of the students. Following are some of the special features of the book: 1. Explanations and illustrations are simple and clear. 2. The fundamental algebraic ideas are based upon and evolved from the arithmetical ideas already familiar. 3. In a similar way, every important new principle is approached by the use of ideas already well known to the learner. The students never come to a blank wall. |