Customer Reviews

Calculus for Biology and Medicine (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Like a few people here have said already, it's a book that is required for many calculus classes offered at UCLA. Sadly, this book, while intended to be geared towards Life Science majors, is poorly written and it appears that the writers were very lazy.

I first took calculus in High School and we used the Stewart 5th edition. That book was great and I know a few classes at UCLA (mostly the 30 series) uses that book. The 3 series at UCLA however, uses the Neuhauser book instead.

1. The Neuhauser book has many questions with incorrect answers in the back of the book.

2. Many of the practice questions are exactly the same with simply a number (like a coefficient) changed. This doesn't help you learn, but it reminds me of elementary school.

3. While it may not be applicable to this review, it is worth noting that many of the problems in the solution book are a) also wrong or b) not worked out completely or at all. This means that many times the answer in the solutions manual was same work (aka only the answer) in the back of the book. Regardless of how intuitive the math may be - I believe that the role of the solution manual is to unambiguously work all problems out in their entirety.

Since all the pages were numbered correctly and isn't the first edition (I can't imagine what that was like -- I apologize for my cynicism.) I will give it two stars, but it is hardly deserving.

Because I felt that this book was so inadequate, I also bought a used version of the Stewart Calculus book for reference. I suggest you do, too; it's a great book and may just help you actually understand the material!

This book is frustrating. Here is why:

- answers in the back of the book often conflict with answers given in the solutions manual

- worked examples are often vague and don't apply to a considerable number of practice problems in the text

- explanations of proofs are rarely straightforward

There is no way I could adequately teach myself calculus out of this book, my professor even deemed it as poorly written. If you must use this book, make sure you pay attention in class, because you surely can't reference the text for constructive help.

This book is only in its second edition and with a few more revisions it has the potential to be a very nice text. The editors need to clean up the errors in the solutions, revisit the example problems and include more applied problems in the problem section. What I like about this text is the manner in which the topics are presented to an applied audience. Limits are presented after a nice discussion of sequences giving students a less abstract notion of a difficult concept. I also like how the later chapters work up to solving systems of differential equations which are very useful for modeling biological systems. I agree that the text needs work, however, I don't think it is as bad as others have stated.

had to endure a year of calculus at UCLA with this book... Good thing i had my brother's old Calculus books which were like 20 years old but still way better written than this piece of junk.

It doesnt explain stuff well enough and also has pretty difficult problems...

The frustrating thing about this book is that the practice problems are absolutely nothing like the example problems. Unless you have a teacher who expands on the ideas inside of the book you will have no idea how to do the problems. Good luck, this book is frustrating. It would be better if you had an answer book for the practice problems that contained evens and odds because the book continues to teach in the practice problems. Incredibly annoying when your teacher doesn't know anything either.

This book is very hard to understand and if you have a professor that lectures with it good luck. The example problems are often unlike the homework problems. It uses a lot of confusing technical definitions and proofs. The solutions manual is just as bad, it often gives just the answers and no explanation of anything. If you have a class that uses this book I would recommend taking a different calculus class even if it means taking the next harder series.

This is a terrible textbook which I believe has not been proofread and/or edited at all before being pushed for publication. I am taking a class that deals only with one chapter in this book, Probability and Statistics and I have found numerous errors, mathematical inaccuracies, and formatting anomalies.

The answers in the back of the book are inconsistent with the correct answers, the answers in the supplementary solutions manual, are also inconsistent with the correct answers, and contain many grammatical and mathematical typos. In one such instance during the exercise problems after a section, the numbering jumps from 48 to 50, leaving no mention of question 49. Instead of correcting this error, the solutions in the back of the book begin to refer to problem 50 as 49, resulting in every problem thereafter being inaccurate.

For the most part, the example problems in the section do not correlate to the more difficult questions in the textbook even slightly, with one question referring to a Bernstein inequality, a theorem which had yet to be even mentioned in the chapter. Inspection of the index reveals that the ONLY time this theorem is referenced to in the book is within the question asking about it itself.

All in all, a terribly written textbook with little to no effort put into the mathematical theory. At the hefty price of over $100, I am not satisfied and will not be taking any more classes that involve this textbook and author ever again.

the book is ok. forced to buy the second edition. answers in the back seemed fine to me (i didnt buy the solutions manual though i've heard it is full of wrong answers).

honestly, buy a used one! because if you spend more than $10 on this book, you will hate yourself. know why? it cannot be sold back to any bookstore. even my university's book buyback program wouldnt take it, and they use the book every quarter.

selling it new for $140+? amazon, you have to be kidding.

I've taken calculus in the past and have had much better books. I currently own this book because my current class requires it, but it is terrible.

Why so bad?

1) A lot of wrong answers in back of book

2) Not enough examples

3) Examples given are very brief and unhelpful

4) Uses mathematical terms that are not the standard for professors and the mathematics world. Making it difficult to transition from pre-calc

5) Teacher hates it too but got stuck with it from prior professors

Just avoid it all together and get a substitute.

Being a student of Biostatistics, Mathematical Epidemiology and Health Economics, this book came quite at a right time for me.
I have used Michael Spivak's Calculus for a long time, and other pure mathematics/engineering calculus books: but i always wanted a book about calculus that was tailored to the medical sciences, and yes i got it in Neuhauser's Calculus for Biology and Medicine.
However, i must say that, most people whose comments are immensely negative about this book are those who probably are lacking a rich background of mathematics, or have nothing at all, for that matter. Because if that is the case, yes, some concepts will seem difficult to grasp. But for someone like me who is already versed in precalculus, algebra and the like, and was just looking out for something more tailored to medical sciences, i find this book ideal.
So, yes, it will not answer all your questions, it will not be all-chewed up material for you just to swallow, it will need some ability and effort on your part.
But so far, it is the best reference in the market for calculus tailored to medical sciences.