Customer Reviews

Brief Calculus and Its Applications (11th Edition)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was assigned this book to teach Calculus to business majors. To call it horrid would be an understatement. Important concepts are only briefly touched upon in examples (such as function composition) and takes unacceptable liberties (saying things like "it is sufficient to think of e as 2.7"). Too much time is spent on trivialities and busywork, rather than examples that would nail the concept down to the student. The book introduces the concept of the derivative before the limit - that's like learning to ride a bike before you know how to walk!

I've never seen a Calc book worse than this. If I had my druthers, I'd use Stewart for my class. It's not perfect, but at least my students would understand how the limit relates to the derivative, rather than have it introduced and immediately dimissed.

this is one of the worst math books i've ever had - maybe even the worst, and i'm an mechanical engineering major (so i've seen a fair few)! The book doesnt explain why, it gives a few brief examples to simplified elementary problems, and then leaves the subject. When you need to look up how do to a more complicated problem, there is no example or method listed to do it.

I found this book not to be very helpful. The material was tedious and their were only a few examples in each section.

The book explains the material in sufficient details and supports it with easy to understand examples. Also, the exercises and assignments are of appropriate level of difficulty. Overall, I think the authors have done a great job.