Entering Student Profile

As a student entering a course using this book, or as someone using this book on their own to gain new skills, techniques, and concepts about quantitative analysis in the business world, you shold have some skills in the areas of mathematics, the use of technology, and writing.

Mathematics background:

Basic algebra skills are essential, but the text does not require well-honed algebraic skills as a pre-requisite. What is most essential is the abstraction that algebra supports in moving from concrete objects to expressions and functions with parameters and variables. Students should have had a mathematics background up to, but not necessarily including, precalculus.

Technology background:

The text does not assume that the students have any knowledge of spreadsheets, though in our experience most have some familiarity with computers and spreadsheets, Excel in particular.

Writing Background:

In our experience, students gain the most from this text when it is taught in a writing-intensive format, using a selection of the chapter memo problems (including revisions). Most first-year college writing course requirements will have prepared students sufficiently to write at the level the memos demand.