Course textbook

The textbook for MATH 101 is Calculus: Early Transcendentals (7th Edition) by James Stewart; it is available at the UBC bookstore. (Sadly, Stewart died just this past December.) The book's publisher maintains a companion web site to the book with lots of additional learning material. MATH 101 has used this textbook for the past several years, so you can probably find used copies around. The course textbook is required, in the sense that we will assume you have access to it when we use section numbers, problem numbers, and other references. If you wish to use a previous edition, it will be your responsibility to manage the differences between editions.

Other helpful things to read

So may students don't do as well as they could in MATH 101, not because of problems with the new material, but because of incomplete mastery of old material! Making sure you are solid on past mathematical skills is the easiest way to substantially increase your grades in MATH 101. Here are some summaries of topics from your mathematical background, for you to review as necessary:

• high school algebra
• analytic geometry (coordinates in the xy-plane, graphs, and equations of lines and curves)
• geometry and trigonometry

Joel Feldman, a UBC professor, has posted his MATH 101 notes for your use. UBC also has a more detailed infinite series module for one of the final topics in MATH 101. UBC's MathHelp wiki has summary pages for dozens and dozens of calculus topics, as well as links to lots of other resources.

Two good online (and free) calculus textbooks are the MOOCulus textbook from Ohio State University (written by lots of people), and the MIT Open Courseware textbook by Gilbert Strang with accompanying video lectures. If you have feedback comparing the Stewart textbook with either of these online textbooks, we are very interested in hearing your thoughts—let us know on Piazza.

Eric Schechter, a retired professor from Vanderbilt University, has a wonderfully detailed web page about common errors mathematics students make.

Helpful things for you to work on

After succeeding on the WebWorK assignments, the best way for you to practice for the midterm and final examinations is to work on some or all of the suggested problems. In addition to supplying extra practice on mechanical steps, they also contain longer problems of the type that WeBWorK can't handle well, but that will definitely be represented on the exams.

Practice midterm examinations and a practice final examination, along with solutions, will be posted during the semester on the midterms web page and final exam web page, respectively.