Question

Hello everyone, I am studying for the CLEP test on Precalculus which I will take on Wed August 3. Coming from the background of someone who's taken a Precalc class but failed once before and who's relatively familiar with the material, how should I structure my study time I have left (3 weeks and 3 days)? Are there specific things on the CLEP Precalculus test I should study for or something? Guides, practice exams, or useful texts? I'll have a lot of time to spend studying and want to do the best I can and at least score a 50.

Answer 1

Study circles, tangent lines to circles, optimization, and curve sketching

Answer 2

study as much as possible

Answer 3

useful text :Pre Calculus: Mathematics for Calculus. by stewart, redlin, and watson

Answer 4

Will there be questions on trig material and trig identities?

Answer 5

and what is optimization?

Answer 6

Now that book, is a big one. It is usually used for an entire school year. If you just wan the basics, and are already familiar with the material, then i suggest George f. Simmion's book Precalculus in a nutshell

Answer 7

Optimization, comes up big in calculus, not so much in precalc, but it does come up, and i remeber it being on a final exam i took in precalc. Optimization is in terms of precalc, finding the vertex of a parabola

Answer 8

CLEP puts out info on each course, tells what subject is studied and even has practice tests http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/ex_pcal.html

Answer 9

wow thanks for link chaguanas. and thanks for book recs and tips arthemismath

Answer 10

Warning, they have a stupid calculator that the maker of the calculator must have paid a fortune to have them to use it. You would actually lose points because you can't figure out the stupid thing. Adding, subtracting, multIplication is OK. But anything more complicated, forget it.

Answer 11

what about graphing? does the calc support graphing? i've downloaded it but haven't give it a spin yet