Any mathy moms care to help me retrace my high school math sequence

[Staci in MO]

This has become a bizarre labor of love, but I'm trying to piece together my high school math texts. It all started when I started investigating all the fuss over old Dolciani texts, only to realize that the 1981 Dolciani was my high school algebra book.

I was in a four year accelerated math class. We started in Algebra I as freshman and went through Calculus our senior year. I originally thought I had notebooks from all four years, but after thinking it over further, I only have notebooks for Trig and Calculus. The teacher didn't require a designated notebook until that year.

Anyway, here's what I remember so far:

Fall of freshman year through early spring - Dolciani Algebra I (1981 copyright)
Spring of freshman year through fall of sophomore year - Jurgensen Geometry (1983 copyright)
Spring of sophomore year through sometime in Junior year: Dolciani Algebra II (I think 1981 copyright)

This is where it gets fuzzy. According to my notebooks, we started trig in March of our Junior year. We finished trig and moved on to Calculus in October of my senior year.

I remember having a separate trig book. Wouldn't I have done additional algebra between Algebra II and trig? Isn't the standard "Pre-calculus" class a combo of College Algebra and Trig?

I can't seem to find a separate trig book from the early eighties. Was there such an animal? Any of you have any ideas what other algebra would have been used to fill in between algebra II and trig?

Thanks for all your help. My husband loves math and even he thinks I've gone off the deep end a little bit. I just thought everyone was taught algebra the way I was, but as I compare Dolciani with other texts, I see that it just isn't so. I'm curious as to what other gems my teacher might have used.

[Jane in NC]

The Dolciani text I used was a combined Algebra II/Trig text, but there is a separate Trig text by Dolciani, Beckenbach and Wooten. It goes by the name of Modern Trigonometry. That may have been the book you used.

The Dolciani Algebra II/Trig material of old is precisely the stuff of a modern Precalculus book.

Any idea what you used for your Calculus course?

Jane (who owns more old Calculus books than she cares to admit)

[Staci in MO]

We must have used the combined Algebra II/Trig text (copyright 1980). I remember that cover. I have a vivid memory of her passing out separate trig books, and the exercises in my Trig notebook are labeled "Chapter 1, chapter 2", etc., so perhaps there was a separate trig book she liked better. I don't know. I've been wrong before.

My Calculus text, I think, had a white spine. The cover was dark blue? purple? The white on the spine extended over an inch or two onto the left side of the front cover, and I think "Calculus" was printed sideways on the cover.

FWIW, it was the same Calculus text that the University of Evansville (in Evansville, Indiana) used for their Calc I classes, because several students went there for college. It was cheaper for them to pay the fee to keep their public school text than to buy it from the college bookstore.

Why I remember all this, but yet can't keep the names of my dogs and my children straight, I'll never know. :)

[lgm]

My high school in Missouri back in late 70s/early 80s had Alg.II/Trig in one book. Black w/electronic display green design on cover (something spirograph like).

I went to a small high school that offered independent study options for all math except Geo, so that's what I did.

9th: Alg I
10th : Geo & AlgII/Trig (one period for each)
11th: Math Analysis
12th: Calc w/textbook from college

I didn't have a set schedule; I was expected to work responsibly during the class period and that was enough to get me through each high school text each year. For calc, I only had one period of math so finished the equivalent of one college semester in one high school year. The content of Geo was enough to give me an easy A in my college logic class.