Wide variety of applications- Most sections contain applied exercises from astronomy, physics, engineering, and the life sciences.  There are a sufficient variety and number of up-to-date applications distributed through-out the text to convince the most skeptical students that mathematics is really useful.

Contains over 160 numbered worked examples, many with lettered parts, which significantly increases the total number of worked examples. Each concept is illustrated with one or more examples, and following each example is a PARALLEL or "MATCHED" problem with an answer near the end of the section so that a student can immediately check his or understanding of a concept.

There are over 2,800 carefully selected and graded problems. These are divided into A, B, and C levels of difficulty in each exercise set.

Optional graphing utility activities are included in appropriate places in the book. These include brief discus-sions in the text, examples or portions of examples solved on a graphing utility, and problems for the student to solve. 

Explore-Discuss boxes interspersed in every section at appropriate places to encourage a student to think about a relationship or process before a result is stated or to investigate additional consequences of a develop-ment in the text. 

Group activities are included at the end of every chapter and involve a number of the concepts discussed in the chapter.

Every section contains Internet Connections.

All graphs in the text are computer generated to insure mathematical accuracy. Graphing utility screens dis-played in the text are actual output from a graphing calculator.

Each chapter has a concise summary of key terms and formulas and a comprehensive review exercise.