Customer Reviews

Calculus and Analytic Geometry (9th Edition)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
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Thomas/Finney 9th edition covers all of the essential aspects of calculus, with an adequate amount of rigor as to not to confuse the freshman audience it is intended for. The graphs and diagrams are especially useful, and the book is extremely well-written. True, some of the examples in the exercises are a bit repetitive, and extremely simple. However, I used this text for an honors calculus class at Cornell, and when supplemented with the proper theoretical background to the subject (in lecture), the text is suitable for a course of that caliber. The "theory and examples" sections (where most of our problem sets came from) presented challenging questions which required a great deal of intuition. Overall the text is excellent, and I learned a lot from it. It has earned a place on my bookshelf.

This is perhaps one of the finest high-school Calculus textbooks in existance. The first eight chapters of Thomas-Finney deal with calculus of functions of a single variable, going through what is commonly known as BC calculus. In addition to covering the essential topics of differentiation and integration, Thomas-Finney pays ample attention to the applications of the two. What results is a lucid text full of examples that ground calculus in the real world.

The second half of Thomas-Finney is devoted mainly to three-dimensional analytic geometry, multivariate calculus, and finally vector calculus. Partial derivitives, conic sections, vector-valued functions, and multiple integrals are just some of the topics covered in the second half. Here too, the book devotes ample time to examples and applications. The presentation of advanced concepts is top-notch.

The text is also interspersed with mathematical biography and sidebars that explain how to use CAS to help understand concepts. These are well presented and do not take away from the core math taught in the book.

I taught myself calculus during a summer using this book and without teacher intervention. It was the only one of five calculus textbooks that presented material clearly and simply enough to understand without outside help. In my mind, that's the highest compliment a math textbook can be given.

I recall seeing this book in my living room when I was seven or eight. I'd pull it off the shelf, open to chapter one, look at the word "limit" and feel my mind go blank.

Well, six years later, I took AP Calculus AB and I made a five on the test. Many factors went in to that. This is one of them.

This book feels very comfortable to read. The margins are very wide and there is a good space between the examples and the text.

Professors Finney and Thomas wrote so clearly. Precise and concise. Whenever I didn't understand what was going on in my AP class, this helped to clarify it better.

There are ample problems for you to practice and apply what you've learned.

It's a shame that this isn't really sold anymore. This is the best. If you can get a copy of this, keep it. So good.

I used this book (5th edition) for a University Honors Calculus class that I took as a senior in High School. As a math enthusiast (my dad was a Math Professor), and compared to other math books, I would say that the exposition in this book is very very good. Addison-Wesley (MA) is renowned for publishing simple and complete books on complex technical subjects - nobody does it better! The authors were from MIT (first 4 editions) and U-Illinois (helped with the 5th edition), respectively (the latter is where I took the honor calculus class), and at the time it was being used at both schools.

Some people have criticized this book as 'repetitive' and 'obvious' but I HEAVILY disagree. Calculus is a set of tools for approaching geometric problems. There are hundreds of tools in this book. My honors calculus professor had us working one sub-section of the book EVERY NIGHT, FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. In that time, we finished the entire book. I worked 4 problems EVERY NIGHT, FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. Later on, I attended MIT, and I was helping the freshmen in their calculus homeworks 5 years later FROM MEMORY! Meanwhile, the MIT students, who had less practice (one problem set per week) quickly forgot what they had learned! So I was helping the upperclassmen to remember their calculus, too !!

Calculus is the very last "bag of tricks" subject that is taught in most math curriculums. The theory behind integration and differentiation and other techniques are all there, in the Thomas and Finney book. The burden is on the reader to understand the theory, before they jump to the practicum. It's true that Thomas and Finney do not ask you to derive new theorems, but there is too much material to allow this in a 2-semester or 3-semester textbook.

I wonder how far people have gone after complaining that there was too much rote practice in this book. In my case, I enjoyed the book and completed a PhD in theoretical computer science.

I used the 5th edition.
This is a standard textbook. It is a bit more detailed than the competition (because it was written by mathematicians, I guess).
Calculus books all cover standard topics. Where they differ is in the quality of the exposition and the bag of tricks they teach. You want a book with both, and this might be it.
It's on the recommended reading list of the Mathematical Association of America as the first choice - as in "***" - for introductory Calculus (i.e., not "advanced") (see: http://www.maa.org/BLL/calculus.htm).

Use this book along with CDs on intermediate algebra Calc I and Calc II from www.thinkwell.com. as an excellent way to start your college studies.

I especially liked the depth he went into with conic sections. I for one had not had that much prior use for conic sections. Newton did. He invented calculus in order to answer specific questions and that involved conics. I like that the writer goes beyond using some of Newtons conclusions and goes into more depth. If you dont like depth, then you can read the first first half of the book and stop there (as is done by most nonscience majors). I have seen other calculus books and specifically bought this once because I dont like just memorizing formulas. I wanted to know more about why this subject was invented in the first place.

The amaising thing is that if you get through this book, you will be able to understand some math and physics known a few generations ago only to Newton and Libenez. Dont you feel smarter already? Even if you have read other calculus books, read this one!

This text since its first edition way back in the 1960's has been held with high regard. The authors have sailed smoothly and presented the vast and ever increasing scope of calculus in the most pleasing manner which is indeed very reader-friendly.The authors also go down memory lane and recall age old instances in the history of calculus. The treatment of conceptual topics such as limits,derivatives,Integration as the area under a curve etc. is marvellous. Majority of the text also include computer related theory and problems. Critically speaking, the only drawback if any is the level of some of the exercise problems of which further some are outrageously simple. Nevertheless, this book should be recommended for all those readers and the mathematically oriented for learning calculus the way it ought to be learnt.

Words cannot explain how good this book is. This must be one of the best books ever written. This is the book that helped me understand the MEANING OF CALCULUS to the point where I can apply it anywhere. I came across this book 8 years ago and to be honest without this book, I would not have been able to understand all the EE theory that I learned afterwards. The chapters on multivariable calculus helped me understand undergrad EM.
So I conclude "A POWERFUL TOOL BOOK FOR ENGINEERS / PHYSICISTS"

The approach to the self study of calculus that I've adopted involves working through every problem in each section. This text is excellent for that technique. The authors present the material in sections that usually build upon on another and can be read in about thirty to forty five minutes while working through the examples. The writing is for the most part clear and easy to follow. Every now and then a section seems disjointed. The progress through differential and integral calculus of functions of a single varible (Chapters 1-7) is very thorough and smooth. The approach is both intuitive and mildly rigorous so that the student is not left thinking that calculus is not without rigor. The emphasis is on applications hence engineering and applied physics students will benefit most from this text. The introduction of transcendental functions is divided into two parts with most material in chapter six. The best aspect of this text is the problem set found at the end of each section. The authors have worked hard to build into the problems the material put forward in the text of the section. The problems are designed to reinforce both calculations as well as to provide stimulation to deeper thought (Theory and Examples section). Problems are divided into sets of problems reflecting the divisions in the section. These problems start as computational exercises and progress into applications and thought problems. Every concept can be looked at from different perspectives and the problems are designed to bring out this understanding of the ideas that are presented in the text. The emphasis is of course on the board applications of the concept. In addition the problems vary in the type of function so that there is a constant review of the techniques of approaches to solving the functions.
An average classroom problem set for a section would be fifteen to twenty problems that would take about an hour and a half for the average student. To work all the problems in a section (range 40-100) takes about six to eight hours.
I bought this text four years ago and a new edition has since been published. I am very satisfied with both the content and approach. I can pick up most texts on the subject and find that my working knowledge as learned from Thomas and Finney is more than adequate to follow the study.

This text is intended for intro college calc courses and AP high school classes. It serves those purposes very well. The complaints by some reviewers that this book does not delve deep enough into theory are completely unwarranted. This book contains more than enough theory for anyone taking those courses, and for those who wish to pursue further studies of calculus there are more advanced courses and texts available for you.