Research & Education Association

This article is about the educational publishing and test preparation company sometimes referred to as "REA" . For other uses, see Rea.
Research & Education Association
REA Company Logo
Parent company Courier corporation Dover Publications is sister company
Status Active
Founded 1965 (1965)
Founder Need
Country of origin United States
Headquarters location New Jersey
Distribution Worldwide
Publication types Test Preparation Guides
Nonfiction topics Standardized Tests
Fiction genres Publishing
Official website rea.com

REA was founded in the late 1960s as an educational publisher, concentrating on problems and solutions, or what we'd call Test preparation today. Consistent with the times, their initial products were published as paper texts, and REA trademarked the term "Problem Solver" for their early titles, which developed into one of their most notable imprints as a series of generally over 1,000 page problem/ solution books that would be called test banks, exam prep or solution manuals today. Because of their comprehensive nature, the "solution manual" theme (which usually ties to an individual subject text) was expanded by marketing the series as "for any text or test."

The problem solver series eventually encompassed over 30 topics with over 28,000 problem/solution sets, including Differential equations, Electric circuits, Electronic circuits, Pre calculus, Calculus, Advanced calculus, Algebra and trigonometry, Physics, Linear algebra, Statistics, Organic chemistry, Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Electromagnetics, Geometry, Chemistry, Probability, Materials strength, Heat transfer, Economics, Robotics, Discrete math, Fluid mechanics and dynamics, Numerical analysis, Optics, Topology, Electronic communications, Operations research, and several others.

Searches of any of the above topics online adding the keywords "problem solver" result in REA publications still generally high in organic results. Dover Publications, their sister company, also promotes the imprint line heavily, as does the test preparation subsection on Amazon. Price and value of these original flagship texts, which pioneered test banks, vary according to the evolution of the fields themselves. For example, Electrical circuits, which have not changed much since the '80's, are still rated highly as problem/solution set examples. Electronics are the opposite, due of course to the explosion of changes in that field since the '80s.[1] Many of the older test banks and publications are now available free or at low cost electronically online, such as on Amazon Marketplace for a US penny, Google books, Scribd and Preptorial.org.

REA today focuses on high attendance test prep, with specific tests highlighted such as GED, CLEP, Advanced placement, ACT, SAT, etc. (see their site and infobox on the right for a list of exams they support). They have added online services and a study center to bring content up to today's test prep standards which reflect a much more computing oriented focus, including online test sims and banks. Comparing the original problem solver series in print at about 30,000 problem/ solution sets, with today's online test banks, show a difference of millions of problems, with (for example) a single test prep bank including audio and video (The official CPA exam prep series) occupying over 50 gigabytes, whereas the Electric Problem Solver text in the reference is 38 meg with illustrations on Kindle. The full 30,000 original "bank" of problem solvers would be less than a gig with today's compression technology.[2]

Test Preparation

Main article: Test preparation

See also

References

  1. ↑ REA Staff (1980). The Electric Circuit Problem Solver. New York: REA. p. 1172. ISBN 0-87891-517-6.
  2. ↑ "Test Bank Electronic Storage Statistics". Preptorial Foundation GNU Access Free Test Bank Compression and Storage Data.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, October 07, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.