The CK-12 Foundation has been my favorite academic publisher for years. Their texts are distributed by the not-for-profit publisher without cost. They were also one of the first high-quality e-text publishers for high school mathematics. My reason for using CK-12 texts was their quality and their FlexBook format. I was creating a fourth-year math course to prepare my school’s students for freshman calculus or statistics courses at top tier universities. I needed to find a text which provided a strong review of precalculus and a solid survey of statistics and calculus. We also wanted to add a bit of our own material to introduce financial mathematics and computer programming. When I found CK-12 Publishing, I realized I could meet all of my requirements.

CK-12 Publishing was started by Neeru Khosla, the wife of Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. She traveled widely in the United States and abroad and realized that not all students had access to the quality resources her children had at a private school. She established the foundation to provide electronic e-text books distributed free of charge. See this video to learn why students and teachers find these texts invaluable.

My favorite textbook, College Precalculus, came into existence after I was commissioned to write the text. CK-12 Publishing wanted a college level precalculus text where topics were discussed rigorously, but motivated through real-world context and supported with multimedia tools. I was delighted to be part of this project. The goals for this textbook were in line with my work as a calculus teacher for the past 30 years. I am fortunate to have been able to work with brilliant, dedicated teachers and I have seen the pedagogy in math change since I was first teaching in a community college. Along with colleagues, I explored the many examples that truly interest early college students in math. They want to know how math supports their areas of interest. Newtonian mechanics are important, but so are the mechanics and dynamics of economic trends and the mathematical patterns we see in the spread of a news story. The book I wrote was a reflection of my entire experience teaching.

The writing experience became bittersweet. I soared through the first eight chapters. Katie, my editor at CK-12, was a great support, but when I was offered a position at the California Department of Education, I learned I could not sign the second contract to finalize the book. It was an exciting part of my teaching career, but, ended with my new position in government where I was now part of a team that created educational policy.

In April of 2017, Katie contacted me for my biography. I had expected to be listed as a contributor, but the first eight chapters were sufficient to set the tone for the book. The publisher decided to list me as lead author. Fresh off of the presses, I read the text with new eyes and could see the work more clearly. I was impressed. Each chapter has introductory material to motivate the major topic through a practical example. In a symmetrical fashion, each chapter ends with ideas for students to more fully explore the topic in various contexts. The formal mathematical topics are all standard fare in precalculus: logarithmic and trigonometric functions, sequences and series, and introductory concepts of the limit. But, placed in the natural world, these are more than strange words, they are seen as patterns in nature and exploit the reader’s internal ability to characterize trends. In line with CK-12’s technical platform, students are able to develop their own native research skills through the exploration of each topic not just with paper and pencil exercises, but also with multimedia illustrations of concepts.

The text is my favorite, because I am a co-author, true. But primarily it is my favorite because it is available without charge. The only cost to study this critical course is the effort to get it and use it! Try the text either to teach a course or as a supplementary resource. I created a PDF for download. Please let me know if you have any questions, because I cherish any reason to read it again!