The 10 Best Algebra Textbooks
Special Honors
WolframAlpha Course Assistant Perfect for struggling high schoolers and college students, the Wolfram Course assistant helps learners work through homework problems, ace tests, and learn vital concepts. It covers topics applicable to Algebra I, Algebra II, and College Algebra. It allows users to evaluate any numeric expression or substitute a value for a variable, simplify fractions and square roots, expand polynomials, factor numeric expressions, polynomials, and symbolic expressions, and more. wolframalpha.com
Khan Academy Algebra I Whether you're looking for a refresher before heading off to college or need some extra instruction while in high school, Khan Academy's course in Algebra I can get you started. It begins with the foundations and takes you through solving equations, inequalities, functions, and irrational numbers. There's also a "Course Challenge" option that tests your knowledge of the skills taught in the class, which is helpful for review before a test. khanacademy.org
Editor's Notes
July 18, 2020:
This most recent update had us ensuring every volume was in its latest version, and we also reassessed what levels of knowledge we were catering to with our selections. To balance out the introductory tomes with intermediate and more advanced options, we said goodbye to Introduction to Linear Algebra and brought on Intermediate Algebra in its stead.
Linear algebra is helpful to learn for myriad reasons, like understanding related mathematical concepts or if you're interested in fields like applied machine learning and quantum computing, but we felt that the majority of students seeking algebra textbooks would benefit more from something like Intermediate Algebra.
We still love the real-world approach texts like Algebra and Trigonometry and Algebra For College Students take. We also appreciate the way Algebra: Structure and Method slowly builds on concepts to make learning incremental and how No-Nonsense Algebra covers pre-algebra material, which is essential for students who tend to struggle with this subject.
July 04, 2019:
Our latest update saw the newest edition of Algebra For College Students, as well as the addition of McDougal Littell Algebra 2 at the expense of Algebra 2 Common Core. Algebra 2 Common Core is still a more than adequate selection, but we felt that as the McDougal Littell version is a classic among many school districts and a much-relied-upon reference for teachers and tutors, it would serve as a more valuable replacement.
When weighing math textbooks, our main priorities include clear layouts, plenty of worked examples, thoroughly-explained concepts, and pedagogical tools that help students retain what they've learned and apply it to real-world problems. Our top two choices Algebra and Trigonometry and Algebra For College Students achieve these goals particularly well.
Students who struggle with algebra would benefit from texts like Algebra Survival Guide and No-Nonsense Algebra, which are designed specifically for learners who find math exceedingly difficult.
Algebra: Structure and Method takes a very meticulous chronological approach that won't frustrate or confuse, while McGraw Hill Algebra 1 serves as an ideal introduction, along with Introduction to Linear Algebra. Adults who want to dive back into the subject will find Introductory and Intermediate Algebra helpful, as it covers the fundamentals yet still takes readers well past the basics.
A Lesson In Mathematics
To my surprise, the bulk of the conversations I had shared a common thread.
Few subjects in school send students into a state of cross-eyes confusion more readily than mathematics. Even among students who naturally excel at it, who are somehow more attuned to the principals of the mathematical world, there can be a resistance to the subject.
I've had some good conversations with mathematician friends of mine, as well as a couple current math teachers, about why so many students balk at math more than other classes. I expected most of them to tell me that math is just harder to learn, or that the majority of human brains simply aren't built to wrap themselves around concepts beyond a certain level.
To my surprise, the bulk of the conversations I had shared a common thread. It's not that higher levels of math are necessarily more difficult to learn; most of the people I talked to said that certain higher levels of math are actually harder to teach.
That may seem like a matter of semantics, but take a look at how we physically interact with our world using math. Learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through elementary school, we find ourselves applying what we learn on a near daily basis. Going to the store for snacks, saving up our allowance for a new video game–everything about this mathematical experience is tangible.
It's when we get into the intangibles that things get hairy. Most school textbooks covering algebra or geometry spend 90% of their pages explaining concepts and formulas as dryly as possible, and finish off each chapter with a petty attempt at exemplifying a scenario in which you might actually apply a given lesson.
That's all well and good for the one student in a thousand who goes on to become an architect, but there's no hook in it for the rest of us. When I got to college, after sloughing through years of unintelligible, inapplicable math textbooks, I took a practical physics class, and I realized what all math text books needed, which is something these algebra books have in varying degrees: a sense of wonder.
The seven books on our list all combine centuries worth of algebraic discovery into a few hundred pages of lessons, quizzes, and examples, but in recent years–likely in response to this sense among math teachers that there was something missing from their books–math texts have been imbued with a greater sense of magic, with the idea that numbers have meanings and implications we can only begin to grasp.
A Method To Your Mathness
As important as I think a sense of mystery is to the education of young mathematical minds, you may completely disagree. And that's fine. Like I said, there are varying degrees of wonder spread through the books on our list, so you can go with the driest among them if that suits your style.
You might be just the opposite, preferring a text that can elevate your lessons to new heights.
After all, each of us learns in slightly different ways. I know that I need my sense of suspicion and curiosity stimulated for my brain to open up to new information. I suspect that this is true of most brains, though I'm sure some shut down as soon as things get philosophical.
As you read up on the descriptions offered for each of the algebra textbooks on our list, it'd be worth keeping in mind your personal learning style. If you're investigating these books as teaching tools, then a close look at your teaching style will be just as useful.
When I taught English for a year at my old high school before heading to graduate school, I actually preferred the drier texts to the more evocative ones. I found that I flew so far off the handle imaginatively that if I had a textbook that did the same, we'd never get anything done. I used a more conservative packet of materials to ground my teaching insanity.
You might be just the opposite, preferring a text that can elevate your lessons to new heights. Whatever your approach, there's a book on this list that'll fit the mold. Not all of the algebra texts on this list approach the same educational levels, either, so make sure that fit is suited to the height you wish to teach or to attain.
Ages Of Algebra
It's a comfortable thing for westerners to attribute all of the great historical achievements of mankind to Greek and Roman thinkers, but the roots of algebra and other mathematical works reache back much farther than that.
By the time the Persian mathematicians made their own great strides in the art, they'd already distributed the thought eastward and into India and China.
Archeologists and math historians have dated the oldest texts known to man that elucidate algebraic concepts to sometime between 2000 and 1500 BCE. These texts–the Babylonian Plimpton 322 tablet and the Egyptian Rhind papyrus–both put forth models of linear equations.
The work of these ancient mathematicians spread to the critical thinkers of Greek antiquity, whose work then spread to the Persian empire. By the time the Persian mathematicians made their own great strides in the art, they'd already distributed the thought eastward and into India and China. At the height of the Persian empire, western Europe received a new taste of evolved algebra up through Spain.
All this rich history covering centuries of exploration, experimentation, and expression, all so sleepy students could have the luxury of checking out in the middle of math class and thinking, instead, about their crush sitting across the classroom.