Description: This clear, accessible treatment of mathematics features a building-block approach toward problem solving, realistic and diverse applications, and chapter organizer to help users focus their study and become effective and confident problem solvers. The "Putting Your Skills to Work and new chapter-end feature, "Math in the Media, present readers with opportunities to utilize critical thinking skills, analyze and interpret data, and problem solve using applied situations encountered in daily life. The Fourth Edition contains additional modeling and real-data coverage. A conceptual approach to functions is introduced early in the book and revisited in Ch. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10--readers are exposed to a variety of realistic situations where functions are used to explain and record the changes we observe in the world. A discussion of solving linear equations in Chapter 2 now includes coverage of equations with no solution and equations with infinitely many solutions. The sections on determinants and Cramer's rule have been moved out of Chapter 4 into an appendix. This material can be covered with ease after Section 4.3.

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