Boelkins M. Active Prelude to Calculus 2019

Textbook in PDF format

Active Prelude to Calculus is designed for college students who aspire to take calculus and who either need to take a course to prepare them for calculus or want to do some additional self-study. Many of the core topics of the course will be familiar to students who have completed high school. At the same time, we take a perspective on every topic that emphasizes how it is important in calculus. This text is written in the spirit of Active Calculus and is especially ideal for students who will eventually study calculus from that text. The reader will find that the text requires them to engage actively with the material, to view topics from multiple perspectives, and to develop deep conceptual understanding of ideas. Many courses at the high school and college level with titles such as “college algebra”, “precalculus”, and “trigonometry” serve other disciplines and courses other than calculus.
Instructors! Read this!
Relating Changing Quantities1
Circular Functions
Exponential and Logarithmic Functions
Trigonometry
Polynomial and Rational Functions