Acknowledgements Acknowledgements
The authors wish first and foremost to express our gratitude to the students who were subjected to various rough drafts of this textbook in a classroom setting. Our intention was always to write a student–centered textbook. To whatever extent we have succeeded in achieving that goal the insights and suggestions of these students were an invaluable help and we are very grateful to them for that.
Second, we wish to thank Dr. H. Joseph Straight (Distinguished Service Professor at SUNY, Fredonia) and Dr. Julia Wilson (Associate Professor of Mathematics also at SUNY, Fredonia) for agreeing to use some of the earlier drafts in his classes. With grace and professionalism, he guided his students through, and sometimes around, the poor organization, murky examples, and innumerable typos of these early versions, simultaneously giving us precious insights and suggestions for improvement. His comments were always on point and we are deeply appreciative of all of his efforts.
We also wish to thank Allison Brown at Milne Open Textbooks for her patience with us. We are sure that she grew very tired of getting emails from us saying that we were almost done only to find that we still had a lot more polishing to do. Through it all her support was unwavering and we are deeply indebted to her for it.
Last, but certainly not least, we wish to thank our copy editor, Dr. Margo Boman, for all of her help in getting us to the current version of this book. When we employed her in this capacity, we thought that we were nearly done. It turned out that we were sadly mistaken. Margo’s attention to detail and her pedagogical expertise were instrumental in transforming a collection of stories and problems into a much more coherent and polished narrative. It was more work than both she and we anticipated, but it was worth it and we are deeply beholden to her. Future teachers and students using this book will benefit enormously from her contribution.
Finally, any errors that might still appear in this text are the fault, and sole responsibility, of the authors.
