This is a focused collection of notes for a course in college algebra taught at San Jacinto College (Houston, Texas). With only 157 pages, this course covers only the core concepts that every college algebra student should know. In addition to learning algebraic and computational skills, the course is designed for learning how to think mathematically. The chapters on mathematical language and problem-solving highlight this latter objective.

This course teaches the art of guessing results and solving problems without doing a proof or an exact calculation. Techniques include extreme-cases reasoning, dimensional analysis, successive approximation, discretization, generalization, and pictorial analysis. Applications include mental calculation, solid geometry, musical intervals, logarithms, integration, infinite series, solitaire, and differential equations. (No epsilons or deltas are harmed by taking this course.) This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.