Chapter 2 of the Sullivan book lists the classes of functions: quadratic, power functions, exponential and logarithmic. When the exponential and logarithmic functions are mentioned in the Anton book, they are being differentiated. I really don’t see any justification for this. With forty pages devoted to these functions, you are spending about as much time on them as is done in a precalculus course and the limit is never mentioned in the chapter. While I agree that some review is probably necessary, once again, I don’t believe that such an extensive review is required. The Anton book follows largely the same path, chapter one contains a review of functions and chapter two begins the study of limits and continuity.Ĭhapter 2 of the Himonas book describes exponential and logarithmic functions. Chapter zero of the Himonas book is devoted to a recapitulation of the categories of functions and chapter one begins the study of limits and continuity. In my opinion, students are there to learn calculus and should already know what a function is. If we are letting students into our calculus classes that need a review of this basic material, then we have failed in our advising and those students will fail the course.
The first is in the introductory material, where the Sullivan book is clearly the weakest. However, there are some significant differences between the texts and my goal here is to point out the major ones between these three books. Some authors appear to be engaged in a form of “arms race”, trying to stand out by adding even more exercises to the ends of the chapters and sections. There is a mind-numbing sameness to introductory calculus texts.
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