Precalculus: A Prelude to Calculus

Sheldon Axler

First Edition (gray cover), first printing, Errata

I want this to be an error-free book. Please send corrections to precalculus@axler.net. Suggestions for improvements for the next edition are also most welcome.

All errors that have been reported in the first printing of the first edition (gray cover) of this book are listed below. Most of these errors were corrected in the second printing.

• Page 48, first line of part (c) of solution to Example 1: "(-2.5, 2.5)" should be "(-2.5, -2.5)".

• Page 68: The "Multiple function transformations" box is meant to apply only to vertical function transformations, which are the transformations that change the vertical shape or vertical location of the graph of a function. Thus insert "vertical" after "multiple" on the third line from the bottom of the page.

• Page 161, solution to part (b) of Example 2: "deg p" should be "deg q".

• Page 165, third line of Example 5: "Is p(x) is positive" should be "Is p(x) positive".

• Page 168, line 3: "degre" should be "degree".

• Page 168, line 8: "on appropriate" should be "an appropriate".

• Page 182, solution to Example 7: "2x⁵" should be "2x" (three times).

• Page 193, line 12: "complex conjugate a + bi" should be "complex conjugate of a + bi".

• Page 196, Example 8: An erroneous minus sign was inserted. The correct zeros of the polynomial are 1 + 2i and 1 - 2i.

• Page 266, third line: "interest in" should be "interest is".

• Page 280, first line: "E₀0" should be "E₀".

• Page 331, Problem 59: "sinh h" should be "sinh x".

• Page 341, line 13: "number positive integer" should be "positive integer".

• Page 456, line 3 from the bottom: "concludes" should be "concludes with".

• Page 463, Problems 30 and 34: The correct name of the twelve-sided polygon is "dodecagon".

• Page 474, last bullet: The advice to use the law of sines rather than the law of cosines (when given the lengths of two sides and an angle other than the one between them) is correct. However, the statement that the law of sines will lead to a unique solution for b is incorrect. The possible non-uniqueness when using the law of sines was discussed earlier in Section 6.2.

• Page 510, line 3 from the bottom: The extra close parenthesis should be removed.

• Page 547, Problem 33: "Show that if u| and v are vectors" should be "Show that if u and v are vectors".

• Page 569, first line: there should not be a period at the end of the displayed equation.

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