Section 1 Preface
Welcome.
Welcome to this set of modules for prerequisite mathematics. There are many reasons why you may have found your ways to these notes: among other possibilities, you might be a high school student wanting some review or preparation before entering unviersity; you may be a prospective student who needs a math prerequisite for entry into one of our programs; you may be a current university student who likewise needs a high-school prerequisite mathematics credit; or you might be a student in a university math course who wants to review their background skills and concepts. Whatever the case, I hope you find these modules useful and helpful.
These notes are designed to accompany a set of videos explaining the concepts and walking through various examples. The videos can be found at this YouTube playlist.
These notes include activities in each section. Mathematics is learned by practice and activity. I suggest you try each activity on your own and then compare your attempt with the solutions. All the solutions are provided in these notes, to aid in self-study.
Skill and Concepts.
There is a temptation to treat mathematics as simply a set of skills or tools. Certainly, skills are important and the majority of these modules focus on specific skills. But skills without concepts are not mathematics. For success in courses that require mathematics, we need you to understand the mathematical concepts just as much (if not more) than we need you to have the mathematical skills. In these notes and the accompanying videos, I focus heavily on concepts. Likewise, each activity includes a set of conceptual questions. I encourage you to use these questions to test yourself. If the concepts are not clear, go back to the videos and the notes again and see if you can pick on the concepts presented.
Scope.
For many of you working through this material, your goal will be writing the assessment test for a Math 30-2 or Math 30-1 prerequisite to allow you to register in a course or enrol in a program. These notes and the accompanying videos are designed to prepare you for those tests. However, this should not be treated as a full replacement for Math 30-2 or Math 30-1 (and nothing in this sytem is designed to allow you to apply to the province of Alberta for credit for those courses). Instead of trying to cover all of the content in those high-school courses, we've chosen particular concepts and skills which are actually used in our university courses. Practically and pragmatically, this is more focus on what you specifically need to succeed in university, as opposed to covering the whole swath of high-school level mathematics.
Level.
These notes and the accompanying videos are designed for multiple audiences with a wide variety of skill levels in mathematics. The level of this material ranges over many grade levels when compared to the Alberta school curriculum. Since these notes and the accompanying videos are designed mostly for self study, I encourage you to spend your time on whichever parts of the material that are challenging to you. For most of you, there will be pieces of this material that are well known; proceed quickly through those pieces to the concepts and skills where you need work and review.