MATHEMATICS: A PRACTICAL ODYSSEY is a market leader, well known for its clear writing and unique variety of topics, including its accessible chapters on logarithms and exponential functions, calculus and Markov chains. Johnson and Mowry's text emphasizes the practical applications and the history of mathematics. It illustrates to students how mathematics is relevant to their education, human history, and culture. The authors effectively demonstrate how learning algebraic concepts allows students to understand more about how logic, probability, statistics, finance, geometry, matrices, logarithms, calculus, and other topics are vital to everyday life.
David Johnson earned a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology (with an emphasis on Learning Theory), from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a Master's degree in Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. After several years working as an academic counselor at Berkeley, he became a Professor of Mathematics at Diablo Valley College (DVC). He has taught DVC's liberal arts math course regularly for about 25 years, using Mathematics a Practical Odyssey. Other favorite courses include Intermediate Algebra, all three semesters of Calculus, and Differential Equations.