Test Your Strength - Precalculus

You start teaching AP^® calculus and are appalled by students' algebra. They can't add algebraic fractions, complex fractions are a nightmare, and if they see a logarithm, they fall apart.  Do you spend time in reviewing?

Test Your Strength is a practice test intended to ascertain the areas of strength and weakness for each student as they enter an AP^® calculus course.  This multiple choice exam is intended for students to take at home. Students email the answers to you (or bring in an answer sheet) and, using an included Excel spreadsheet, the exam is instantly graded. And in addition, a form is inmmediately generated that provides a detailed analysis of every precalculus skill and how well the student understands it.

Test Your Strength is a diagnostic tool. The exam has 72 multiple-choice questions.  It covers precalculus topics that students are expected to have down pat when they take AP^® calculus.  For instance, in calculus when students use the product and quotient rule, negative exponents are used extensively.  By keeping track of how many questions a student answers correctly within each topic, a table is constructed containing all the important topics of precalculus and how the student performs in each.  The table is constructed instantly upon input of the 72 answers and a teacher can grade an entire class in just 15 minutes. Teachers can also choose to have students fewer than 72 questions as well if time is an assue. With your order, you receive a short booklet that gives you information on how best to use the application.

And while students see the areas in which they need to work, you can also get an idea of the areas in which the class needs work.

This is not intended to be a final exam for precalculus as not all precalculus topics are covered. For instance, deMoivre's Theorem is used to expand trig expressions using imaginary numbers. But the skills used in this theorem does not appear in AP^® calculus so there will be no problems using it. in Test Your Strength is a diagnostic tool to aid students and teachers as they enter AP^® calculus. If students use it at the end of the school year or over the summer, they will have time to strengthen those weak areas.

The student version of Test Your Strength is free and the links are below.

The solution version of Test Your Strength (detailed solutions of each problem along with the Excel template) is now available. The price is $15.95.

                 Free downloads of student versions

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We will accept purchase orders. Secure a P.O. from your school, complete the information as to what you wish to order, and email us and we will give you instructions for where to send it. Upon receipt, we will immediately send you your material.

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