Chapter 1 : Preliminaries
Here are a set of practice problems for the Preliminaries chapter of the Algebra notes.
- If you’d like a pdf document containing the solutions the download tab above contains links to pdf’s containing the solutions for the full book, chapter and section. At this time, I do not offer pdf’s for solutions to individual problems.
- If you’d like to view the solutions on the web go to the problem set web page, click the solution link for any problem and it will take you to the solution to that problem.
Note that some sections will have more problems than others and some will have more or less of a variety of problems. Most sections should have a range of difficulty levels in the problems although this will vary from section to section.
Here is a list of all the sections for which practice problems have been written as well as a brief description of the material covered in the notes for that particular section.
Integer Exponents – In this section we will start looking at exponents. We will give the basic properties of exponents and illustrate some of the common mistakes students make in working with exponents. Examples in this section we will be restricted to integer exponents. Rational exponents will be discussed in the next section.
Rational Exponents – In this section we will define what we mean by a rational exponent and extend the properties from the previous section to rational exponents. We will also discuss how to evaluate numbers raised to a rational exponent.
Radicals – In this section we will define radical notation and relate radicals to rational exponents. We will also give the properties of radicals and some of the common mistakes students often make with radicals. We will also define simplified radical form and show how to rationalize the denominator.
Polynomials – In this section we will introduce the basics of polynomials a topic that will appear throughout this course. We will define the degree of a polynomial and discuss how to add, subtract and multiply polynomials.
Factoring Polynomials – In this section we look at factoring polynomials a topic that will appear in pretty much every chapter in this course and so is vital that you understand it. We will discuss factoring out the greatest common factor, factoring by grouping, factoring quadratics and factoring polynomials with degree greater than 2.
Rational Expressions – In this section we will define rational expressions. We will discuss how to reduce a rational expression lowest terms and how to add, subtract, multiply and divide rational expressions.
Complex Numbers – In this section we give a very quick primer on complex numbers including standard form, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing them.