• Internet-based Chapter Projects, with assignable exercises in MyMathLab, allow students to experience mathematics first hand in an active learning environment. By exploring and considering a variety of carefully guided “what-if” scenarios, they will develop a better understanding of the concepts presented in the section. Students will learn by doing and have fun in the process.
• Author Solves It MathXL Videos show Mike Sullivan III working by section through MathXL exercises typically requested by students for more explanation or tutoring. These videos are a result of Sullivan’s experiences in teaching online.
• Showcase Examples are used to present examples in a guided, step-by-step format. Students can immediately see how each of the steps in a problem is employed. The “How To” examples have a two-column format in which the left column describes the step in solving the problem and the right column displays the algebra, complete with annotations.
• Exercise sets have been updated and expanded to integrate new question types that give instructors more flexibility and help students build their conceptual understanding.
  • Mixed Practice problems offer comprehensive assessment of the skills learned in the section by asking questions that relate to more than one concept or objective. These problems may also require students to utilize skills learned in previous sections, helping them to see how concepts are tied together.
  • Concepts and Vocabulary exercises have been written to serve as reading quizzes and are now assignable in MyMathLab® and MathXL®.
  • Model It exercises and examples are now highlighted, making it easy to identify which exercises ask students to build a mathematical model from verbal descriptions or from data.
  • Enhanced!Applications and Extensions have been updated and many new problems have been added involving sourced information and data sets to bring relevance and timeliness to these exercises.
• Annotated Instructor’s Edition now provides the answers to all problems right on the page where they appear, with longer answers in the back of the book. Sample homework assignments are pre-selected by the author for each section–these are indicated by a blue underline within the exercise set, and are assignable in MyMathLab.

Michael Sullivan, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Chicago State University, received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Mike taught at Chicago State for 35 years before recently retiring. He is a native of Chicago’s South Side and divides his time between a home in Oak Lawn IL and a condo in Naples FL.

Mike is a member of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. He is a past president of the Text and Academic Authors Association and is currently Treasurer of its Foundation. He is a member of the TAA Council of Fellows and was awarded the TAA Mike Keedy award in 1997 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. In addition, he represents TAA on the Authors Coalition of America.

Mike has been writing textbooks for more than 35 years and currently has 15 books in print, twelve with Pearson Education. When not writing, he enjoys tennis, golf, gardening, and travel.

Mike has four children: Kathleen, who teaches college mathematics; Michael III, who also teaches college mathematics, and who is his coauthor on two precalculus series; Dan, who is a sales director for Pearson Education; and Colleen, who teaches middle-school and secondary school mathematics. Twelve grandchildren round out the family.