Customer Reviews

Calculus (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

I was surprised to see all the negative reviews of one of my favourite first-year textbooks. This must be one of the best textbooks I have ever used. I find it very clearly written, wonderfully illustrated, with lots of interesting asides. Although this is one of my first textbooks, I still often refer to it during the course of my engineering work.

The basic concepts are quite clear and easy-to-undersstand

I used this text in high school for AP Calculus AB.

Though it is a college text, I feel that only a high school would ever use this textbook. It actually only covers single-variable calculus, which is the depth of Calculus BC. This accounts for its relatively small dimensions compared to other calculus texts.

The text itself is basically the same as "Calculus with Analytic Geometry" by Finney and Thomas. Professors Demana and Waits add their knowledge of graphing calculator technology and Mr. Kennedy adapts some of the information to be more relevant for the AP syllabus.

However, Demana and Waits don't write as well as Finney and Thomas do. They lack the conciseness and clarity of those two aforementioned authors. Furthermore, the margins are VERY thin. There are too many images displayed on the pages. It does not feel comfortable to read this text. The single spacing doesn't help, either.

Multivariable calculus is appropriately excluded, but unlike "Calculus with Analytic Geometry", this text does not have that many practice problems at the end of each chapter. Not good if you are struggling with a concept and need more practice.

I can't really recommend this text to anyone. It is not a comfortable read and does not have enough problems.

If you want to learn calculus from first-rate experts and also first-rate explainers, you will love this text. The authors have gone to great lengths to motivate and elucidate the ideas behind calculus, and they do so in a brilliant and very readable fashion. They take the reader by the hand and explain, step by step, what you need to know. Countless applications from science, engineering, and economics let you get an idea of how calculus is really used out there in the field.

If this book should be your first calculus text, you may consider yourself fortunate because you will not only get an extremely well explained introduction into calculus, but will also be exposed to a wealth of colorful background information. Many math texts go into dry theorem-proof treatments; everything's there, but the subject does not come to life. You will find this book refreshingly different.

One caveat. You need to bear in mind that this book is an introductory text, though a very complete one that tells you about Lagrange multipliers and vector calculus and triple integrals. If, however, you are an accomplished mathematician looking for post-graduate information on integration in topological vector spaces, you need to look elsewhere. But even then you would be likely, in this excellent and exciting book, to stumble upon some interesting information that you may not have known about before.

This calculus book gives the calculus student a rich text full of useful and practical examples that will assist the student to excel in higher levels of calculus. I say this is one of the best calculus books I have come across.

I bought this manual for one of my students. It does a fairly comprehensive job of explaining solutions to problems from the textbook.

Finney and Thomas calculus textbooks are perhaps the most popular textbooks in high school and college courses, and for good reason. Finney and Thomas write the definitive text for the subject, and this edition continues their tradition of excellent textbooks. I feel there truly is no better calculus textbook or calculus reference book than one written by this pair. This is the one I grab from the shelf when I need a refresher - and believe me, being a math teacher there are a lot of calculus texts on those shelves!

I searched here for my Calculus textbook by ISDN#, when I found it I noticed that the page indicated there were "Other editions: Hardcover, Paperback". I thought, "Excellent, I can buy my text as a paperback and save buckets of money", so I clicked on the link to "Paperback" and ordered the book. To my chagrin, the book that arrived was NOT my text, but was instead a study guide. I feel deceived, I feel the link that I clicked should have been described as "supplemental editions" or something similar, since the paperback was not actually another edition of the same textbook.

Textbook was at a very acceptable price and arrived quickly and in very good condition. Will be used for tutoring.

This book was good for understanding the basics of all the concepts, but if you wanted to go more in depth, it was not a very good learning resource. The explanations were not very clear and detailed, and there were also not enough examples. Often, I felt that it would have been much more helpful to have detailed explanations of the more difficult problems.