

PREFACE. 



The present volume originated in a desire on the part of the 

 authors to furnish a text of Course I. as was previously mapped 

 out by the department of mathematics at the University of 

 Wisconsin. 



The orginal intent was to produce a syllabu."? for the use of 

 students in this institution, but it was subsequently thought that 

 a work which would be useful here might also be found useful 

 elsewhere, and hence it w^as decided to give the w^ork more the 

 character of a treatise than a syllabus. To insure the best results 

 it was thought desirable to print the present preliminary edition 

 and put it to the test of class room work, and at the same time to 

 invite criticism and suggestions from teachers and others inter- 

 ested in mathematics, and then from the results of the authors' 

 tests, and from the experience of others, to rewrite the work, 

 changing it freely. For these reasons the treatment of many 

 subjects in the following pages should be understood as merely 

 tentative. The final form will depend entirely upon the results 

 of experience. 



An examination of the text will reveal many deviations from 

 the beaten path, but the idea was not to deviate simpl}^ for the 

 sake of being different from others ; on the contrary the authors 

 have freely drawn from other works. The sources from which 

 material has been most largeh^ drawn are the following: For 

 problems, Christie's Test Questions and Wolstenholm's Collec- 

 tion ; for various matters in the text, Kempt's Lehrbuch in die 

 Moderne Algebra, and the algebras of Chrystal; Aldis; Hall and 

 Knight; Oliver, Wait and Jones; and Todhunter ; for historical 

 notes, Marie's Histoire des Sciences Mathematiques et Physiques, 

 and Matthiesen'sGrundzuge der Antiken und Modernen Algebra. 



M.106055 



