The Times The Times Education Series A Level Pure Maths

divided into chapters (which appear on the opening screen) the disc covers the following topics: algebra, functions, coordinate geometry, sequence and series, trigonometry, exponentials and logarithms, differentiation, integration, numerical methods and vectors.

you open a chapter by clicking on its icon at the main screen. When the next window appears, you'll see the chapter heading and a series of buttons along the bottom which will help you navigate the chapter, either a page at a time or by jumping to the start and end of the chapter's sections (these are accessible from the top of the screen--just click the relevant tab). The navigation buttons are the same no matter which chapter you're in and allow you to print out sections of the cd, search for particular words (and then follow them through the entire cd by clicking on the links); there are also two question buttons--quick questions which are designed to recap what you've just learned and exam-style ones which are expressed more formally and thus, more like the real thing.

like the other products in this series, a level pure maths bills itself as "your personal tutor" and in the main, lives up to it. More multimedia would have made better use of the medium, but maths probably lends itself less to this than, for example, chemistry or physics. One thing's for sure, students who are serious about the subject will undoubtedly benefit from this cd-rom whether for the qualities of its structured coverage of the coursework or for the way it will help prepare for the final examination. --rob beattie