Is our PreCalculus book too easy?

<p>I'm in Honors Algebra 2 right now, but our school has all the math textbooks downloaded on our school-issued laptops. I looked through the PreCalculus book.</p>

<p>Chapter 1 is just distance/midpoint formula, graphing, intercepts, lines, and circles.
Chapter 2 is just function basics: domain/range, even/odd, maximums/minimums, and piecewise functions
Chapter 3 is solving linear and quadratic equations
Chapter 4 covers Polynomial functions</p>

<p>We've already done most of the material in Chapters 1-3, Chapter 11(Systems of Equations and Inequalities?), and we've done some of the material in chapter 4 and in previous years stuff in Chapters 12 and 13(Sequences and Series/Probability).</p>

<p>Apparently, the Honors PreCalculus class is just doing degree of a function right now.</p>

<p>So is PreCalc basically just a repeat of Algebra 2 plus trig?</p>

<p>I’m in PreCal and all we’ve learned is secant, cosecant, cotangent and all of that fun stuff…</p>

<p>Yes, PreCalc is a repeat of Algebra 2 plus trig. With any luck you’re learning to do it better though. Plus you might be covering some advanced topics, like induction.</p>

<p>Sent from my PC36100 using CC App</p>

<p>Pre-Calc is one of the greatest classes ever. Well, in terms of repeating already-covered material, anyway. It’s a huge waste of time. I’m glad I dropped it. Calculus is EASY. Seriously, watch the videos on Khan Academy or something. It’s almost entirely intuitive. I’m teaching it to myself and I caught up to my school’s AP Calc AB class in about a day (it’s almost a fourth of the way through the school year). Seriously, Pre-calc is a huge waste of time. Here’s a line straight off of the Wikipedia article on it: “In many schools, precalculus is actually two separate courses: Algebra and Trigonometry.” In other words, Pre-calc = Alg + Trig. So, for people who have taken Algebra and Trig, Pre-calc is WORTHLESS.</p>

<p>Just a little rant. The county wouldn’t let me skip it. :(</p>

<p>i swear i should have skipped that whole year and gone straight into calc, in our school before taking calc u have to take half a year of “college algebra”-algebra basically with more graphs and half a year of pre calculus-algebra plus trig, we had a horrible teacher-he was nice but he didn’t teach( literally he sat most of the time on his desk or played us electric guitar concerts lol) fortunately my calc teacher is amazing and makes calc so easy :)</p>

<p>I didn’t have a very good algebra 2 teacher, and my precalc teacher was terrible. I learned some trigonometry, sinusoidal equations and the circle, radians, parametrics, polar functions, and tons of other stuff that I’ve already forgotten. I’ve taken Calculus with Applicatons last year, and it was very easy. </p>

<p>The stuff you’re covering now sounds to me like review from years past. I did degrees of functions and properites of graphs and piecewise functions and linear and quadratic functions and all that stuff in Algebra 1. I did the midpoint formula in Geometry. What you’re taking does not sound like Precalc at all to me. Perhaps you live somewhere with a different curriculum from mine?</p>

<p>It depends on your school.</p>

<p>^It absolutely depends on your school. I’m taking honors right now, the teacher is brilliant, and we’re using a huge college level textbook. Some of it is review, but we go much more in-depth than we ever did in Alg2. It’s one of the hardest courses in my school, probably even more rigorous than calc. Nobody in the advanced math track skips precalc. Then again, I go to a moderately large, competitive public school with great academics. </p>

<p>If your school’s precalc class isn’t anything more than basic algebra, it’s probably taking it over the summer or just going straight to calc.</p>

<p>We’re halfway through the semester (one semester class) and are just now starting Trigonometry, up until now it’s all been review.</p>

<p>At my school its ridiculously hard. We started trig like the third day and we’ve done pretty much nothing algebra related besides solving equations (which is been one section of one of the five chapters we have done) According to the people taking AP calculus, calculus is easier.</p>

<p>Precalc is so easy it’s just a big review… AP Calc for me is way harder because there’s new stuff to do and it’s just yeah. If I could I would’ve skipped precalc knowing what I know now. I HATE math, I have never gotten higher than a B+ in it but in precalc I had like a 99% average.</p>