Feeling beaten down with Functions(ch5 of guide 3)

[greystealth]

I'm having a really hard time mastering the material on Functions. I never remembered it being this hard in gradeschool. In fact, it was easy back then...

I couldn't find anything in the Foundations of Math to help me with these concepts, have I overlooked something?

[StaceyKoprince]

Good question. There isn't an explicit "functions" section in Foundations, but parts can still be helpful. You should mainly worry about the first 3 sections in the chapter.

These functions typically involve quadratics. If you're struggling with the quadratic equation aspect of functions, then check out chapter 2 of Foundations.

Perhaps you know quadratics but don't see the connection between quads and functions. That whole "f(x)" thing is really just another way to say "y."

If you see: f(x) = x^2 - 2
That also means: y = x^2 - 2

if they ask for the value of f(5), that's really just saying "plug 5 in for x and see what y is."

Compound functions are more complicated and less common on the test. You have my permission not to worry about that topic. Ditto function graphs and linear growth.