Customer Reviews

Calculus: Concepts and Contexts (with CD-ROM, Make the Grade, vMentor, and InfoTrac)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book has, hands down, the worst explanations of any textbook I have ever read. During my second semester of calculus I just gave up reading the text and started relying solely on lecture. Also, half this book is fluff; such as the pointlessly short chapter on differential equations and all the chapters on applications(natural sciences, statistics etc.) Those things should be left to other books that can go into more detail. No course even has the time to cover all those topics. Important chapters, like methods for integration, are far too short(there is one stinking page for trigonometric substitution). The only redeeming factors of this book is that it has lots of color illustrations, and that it's massive enough to beat someone to death with.

I am a student in college currently using this book for second semester calculus after using it for first semester. This book has an amazing way of making a simple problem horribly complicated! The explainations are confusing and the author assumes that you have already mastered previous material and often leaves out neccesary explainations and steps in problems. Also, other calculus books that I have worked with have much better organization of topics. This book throws out sections in chapters that do not make sense to the overall theme of the chapter. In my calculus class, it was almost pointless to learn from this unnecessarily difficult book and relied on learning only from the lecture. This is not only my opinion, but also the general consensus from all students using this book. If you are buying this book for a class I definately advise you to get the study guide for this book (it does a better job of explaining steps and simpler ways to doing problems) and other study materials!

This book is flat out horrible for calc II (chapters 4.5-8). The author skips steps in examples, assumes the reader knows too much, and expects the student to solve problems beyond the chapters instruction. With the wrong instructor (and I've had a few), this book does nothing to educate the student. Shame on universities that continue to drive this one down our throats!

Portland St. student

Of the 18 math textbooks I've used in my academic lifetime, this is the worst by a mile. Let's start with the unforgivable flaw: it does a terrible job explaining mathematical concepts. Mr. Stewart seems to assume absolute mastery of all material involved (often high-level algebra and trigonometry) -- an assumption that causes him to frequently skip or combine steps in explanations, which can leave you scratching your head at how the hell he arrived at the conclusion (sometimes he even seems to assume you know the very thing he's supposed to be teaching you). I found that reading the intro & examples for any given section gives adequate training to solve the first 10 or 20 problems, but for the remaining 30 you're on your own, stuck there staring blankly at the page, frustrated at having no educational resource to turn to. If you want to survive whatever class force-feeds this textbook down your throat, you'd better hope to end up with a professor who's clear and helpful enough to compensate (do prior research on ratemyprofessors.com), because you won't get far relying on this book alone.

For the record, I'm not a moron. I scored 91%ile on the math SAT, and got an A in the course preceding this one (Precalc), and have generally always felt comfortable with math. This book made me feel pretty dumb until I found all the Amazon reviews on Stewart's other calc books making the same complaints. Don't let it get you down.

We can dock further points for being 1,000+ pages thick, not very solidly constructed (the binding gets weak and wiggly pretty fast), and with a sticker closing in on $170, outrageously overpriced.

This textbook is absolutely terrible at explaining and teaching calculus. Each chapter starts off with a complex, mathematical definition. Okay, that's fine, but it never explains in layman's terms how on earth we're supposed to adapt this definition to problems. I'm not a self-taught genius! I'm a student! Explain, explain, explain! After the definition, there are a couple examples, but these are more useless than helpful. Very rarely are steps shown in the examples to walk you through the steps. Even if I look up techniques I already know, I'm still confused by this textbook's way of instructing.

If you want to pass calculus, you're going to need a great instructor, not this book. It's horrible for studying and is really only good for the homework problems, if you have the solutions manual (which you have to pay even more for). This textbook is just lazy, a waste of money, and will only confuse you further. Avoid if at all possible.

This book is honestly quite terrible. Other reviewers generally concur, with a few exceptions every now and then that point out some of its good qualities. This is a very difficult book to actually learn from. The provided instructions provide only a narrow track which you must follow. You are told what the rules are, but not what they are not. When you encounter a problem in the homework that does not fall into the neat little mold that the author provides then you will be lost. And good luck trying to find the info in the book. It seems that I constantly have the feeling that I am playing catch-up. Bits of information are resurrected from earlier chapters that send me scrambling for definitions.

This scrambling gets old fast, so I started paying closer attention to what is actually in this book, and I can tell you honestly, there's alot, but it doesn't amount to much. He is constantly leaving out definitions, provides little context to what are the most important things to learn, and very, very, often he goes full steam into examples in the book without explaining what they are, what they are for, when to use them, when not to use them, and often doesn't even bother to have any sort of introduction to the lesson. I get the feeling that the author thinks that I should already know how to use what is being taught and to understand the importance of each lesson, just as he does. Long story short, this book will often leave you scratching your head and wondering what you missed. Eventually you will probably just give up on the class, or you perhaps if you do hang in there, buy a better book, or just ask wikipedia.

Stewart offers the reader a multimedia approach to learning calculus. The book's text is well written and illustrated. But given that there have been texts on this material for centuries, it is hard for any author to add much that is new in either the material or how it is presented. One difference from texts before 1980 or so is that the figures here are far more colourful. When I learnt calculus in the 70s, figures were sparse and usually black and white. Yet I and my peers learnt the concepts. Current readers have it much easier.

This is amplified by the CD that accompanies the book. In it, the animations might be the most distinguishing feature. They give more depth to the book, when discussing the difficult or subtler aspects of the calculus.

Chances are, the top students won't need all this on the CD, or even any of it. Rather, its effect may be best on the average or lesser students, by given them more toeholds on the subject.

This is a very informative textbook and the college I'm studying at uses it for Calculus 1, 2 and 3, so it's not a bad deal.

However, it does NOT come with the promised TEC CD-ROM, CD with interactive skill builder and iLrn. I complained and Amazon sent a 2nd new book but it didn't have the extras either. There was nothing more they could do. I went to the publishers site to buy them and could not find where to buy them, so I guess I'm out.

Buyer beware - this is probably one to buy at your campus bookstore so you can see what you're getting.

the condition is not good as the description not worth 134$ if this book sells at 75$ then its acceptable

great quality, looked like it was new and didn't even have any marks on it or anything! thank you you