Using and Understanding Mathematics: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach prepares students for the mathematics they will encounter in college courses, their future career, and life in general. Its quantitative reasoning approach helps students to build the skills needed to understand major issues in everyday life, and compels students to acquire the problem-solving tools that they will need to think critically about quantitative issues in contemporary society. This program will provide a better teaching and learning experience-for you and your students. Here's how: *The real-world focus turns students' attention to the math they will need for college, career, and life. * A wide range of exercises and problem types end each unit, making it easy for instructors to create assignments to fit their course goals. *Study and review features in every chapter are designed to help students use their time effectively.
About our authors
Jeffrey Bennett served as the first director of the program "Quantitative Reasoning and Mathematical Skills" at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he developed the groundbreaking curriculum that became the basis of this textbook. He holds a BA in biophysics (University of California, San Diego) and an MS and a PhD in astrophysics (University of Colorado), and has focused his career on math and science education.
In addition to co-authoring this textbook, he is also the lead author of best-selling college textbooks on statistical reasoning, astronomy, and astrobiology, and of more than a dozen books for children and adults. All 6 of his children's books have been selected for NASA's Story Time From Space. Among his other projects, Dr. Bennett proposed and co-led the development of the Voyage Scale Model Solar System in Washington, DC; created the free Totality app to help people learn about total solar eclipses; wrote an online primer on global warming; and developed a free, online curriculum for middle school Earth and Space Science. Learn more at Dr. Bennett's websites, Jeffrey Bennett: Astronomer, Teacher, & Writer, and Big Kid Science.
William L. Briggs was on the mathematics faculty at Clarkson University for 6 years and at the University of Colorado at Denver for 23 years, where he taught both undergraduate and graduate courses, with a special interest in applied mathematics. During much of that time he designed and taught courses in quantitative reasoning. In addition to this book, he has co-authored textbooks on statistical reasoning and calculus, as well as monographs in computational mathematics. He is also author of How America Got Its Guns (University of New Mexico Press). Dr. Briggs is a University of Colorado President's Teaching Scholar and the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Ireland; he holds a BA degree from the University of Colorado and an MS and a PhD from Harvard University.