Prerequisiste Reviews

If it has been a while since you took a math course, or you aren't really sure if you know the material to take a course, the review sheets on this page should help you to decide.

Students who have been away from mathematics for awhile have often forgotten some of the material. Yet most college mathematics courses rely heavily on students recalling material from previous courses. Our experience has led us to believe that using the results of an assessment test which the students take "cold" for placement is not very effective. What we really need to measure is how quickly the student will recall material which they have previously learned. These prerequisite review sheets were developed to aid in this process. We strongly encourage you to work your way through the one appropriate to your course before the course starts and preferably before you take the assessment test.

If you find that you need help on these problems, you can get help from a friend or a tutor, look at an algebra book yourself, or use some algebra review software on a computer. Please get as much help as you need to recall how to do the problems.

Caution:

Please keep in mind that working these few problems does not substitute for actually taking the prerequisite course(s). In a one-semester course, you should spend about 150 hours of work, working between 300 and 700 problems, and be tested on 50 to 150 problems. Learning how to do one set of prerequisite review problems will not replace all the material that you would have learned in a course. So, do not be tempted to use these to replace actually taking the appropriate courses.

Here are links for each of the courses for which we have such review sheets on the Web. As additional materials are developed or made available for the Web, they will be added. We hope that you find these useful.