Math 3080 Preparation

This package contains preparation material for MATH 3080 for students who previously took MATH 3069. The content is optional and provides some material to review before moving from MATH 3069 to MATH 3080.

MATH 3080 is broken down into five distinct parts: an introduction to functions and then four specific types of functions that we will study.

In MATH 3080, there is a lot of content to cover, so it will move quicker than MATH 3069. For most of the course, we will cover three sections every week, starting the very first week of classes. Other than the pace, the course set-up is very similar to MATH 3069, so you will have a lab due at the end of each chapter, two assignments and two tests.

We will be using Vretta again this semester, so please go ahead and purchase your e-textbook and access code on Vretta, through FOL, as soon as you have access to the course. Unlike MATH 3069, the textbook at the bookstore DOES NOT contain your access code, so if you choose to purchase from the bookstore, you will still need to make the e-textbook purchase through Vretta on FOL.

The following chapters will help you to prepare for the first few weeks of class.

A jetliner changes altitude as its distance from the starting point of a flight increases. The weight of a growing child increases with time. In each case, one quantity depends on another. There is a relationship between the two quantities that we can describe, analyze, and use to make predictions. In this section, we will analyze such relationships.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, the values of stocks of internet and technology companies rose dramatically. As a result, the Standard and Poor’s stock market average rose as well. Figure 1-1 tracks the value of that initial investment of just under $100 over the 40 years. It shows that an investment that was worth less than $500 until about 1995 skyrocketed up to about $1,100 by the beginning of 2000. That five-year period became known as the “dot-com bubble” because so many internet startups were formed. As bubbles tend to do, though, the dot-com bubble eventually burst. Many companies grew too fast and then suddenly went out of business. The result caused the sharp decline represented on the graph beginning at the end of 2000. Notice, as we consider this example, that there is a definite relationship between the year and stock market average. For any year we choose, we can determine the corresponding value of the stock market average. In this chapter, we will explore these kinds of relationships and their properties.

A relation is a set of ordered pairs. The set of the first components of each ordered pair is called the domain and the set of the second components of each ordered pair is called the range. Consider the following set of ordered pairs. The first numbers in each pair are the first five natural numbers. The second number in each pair is twice that of the first.