Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Stewart's Calculus Series) [Hardcover]

James Stewart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0495011665 | ISBN-13: 978-0495011668 | Edition: 6

Success in your calculus course starts here! James Stewart's CALCULUS texts are world-wide best-sellers for a reason: they are clear, accurate, and filled with relevant, real-world examples. With CALCULUS: EARLY TRANCENDENTALS, Sixth Edition, Stewart conveys not only the utility of calculus to help you develop technical competence, but also gives you an appreciation for the intrinsic beauty of the subject. His patient examples and built-in learning aids will help you build your mathematical confidence and achieve your goals in the course!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Stewart received his M.S. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He did research at the University of London and was influenced by the famous mathematician George Polya at Stanford University. Stewart is currently Professor of Mathematics at McMaster University, and his research field is harmonic analysis. Stewart is the author of a best-selling calculus textbook series published by Cengage Learning Brooks/Cole, including CALCULUS, CALCULUS: EARLY TRANSCENDENTALS, and CALCULUS: CONCEPTS AND CONTEXTS, as well as a series of precalculus texts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1308 pages
• Publisher: Cengage Learning; 6 edition (June 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0495011665
• ISBN-13: 978-0495011668
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 1.5 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Mathematics

More About the Author

James Stewart received the M.S. degree from Stanford University and the Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of London, he became Professor of Mathematics at McMaster University. His research has been in harmonic analysis and functional analysis. Stewart's books include a series of high school textbooks as well as a best-selling series of calculus textbooks. He is also co-author, with Lothar Redlin and Saleem Watson, of a series of college algebra and precalculus textbooks. Translations of his books include those in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Greek, and Indonesian.

A talented violinst, Stewart was concertmaster of the McMaster Symphony Orchestra for many years and played professionally in the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. Having explored connections between music and mathematics, Stewart has given more than 20 talks worldwide on Mathematics and Music and is planning to write a book that attempts to explain why mathematicians tend to be musical.

Stewart was named a Fellow of the Fields Institute in 2002 and was awarded an honorary D.Sc. in 2003 by McMaster University. The library of the Fields Institute is named after him. The James Stewart Mathematics Centre was opened in October, 2003, at McMaster University.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars crap exposition, great problems December 20, 2009

By Ashraf Eassa VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I used this textbook in a Calculus 3 course, so my primary experience is with chapters 12-16, but I did find myself referencing chapters 3, 4, 7, and 10 extensively to refresh my memory (and to learn some things I hadn't learned in high school BC Calculus).

The exposition is, for lack of a better word, "meh". It relies mostly on giving a few definitions, working through a few simple examples, then throwing hordes of problems at the reader. Now, this is perfectly fine for a lower division mathematics textbook -- such a process builds mathematical maturity (at least for me it did), but I would've liked the text, if anything, to rely *less* on showing by example and more on providing mathematical motivation for the given topics (the "big picture" of what we're trying to do, so to speak, rather than a few examples of technical details). The text's quality in this regard also has a fairly steep downward slope as the book progresses -- the text was readable and informative for, perhaps, the first 11 chapters, but from chapters 12-16 it's just really hard to learn from it on your own (and believe me, when you miss class, you have to do that).

Now, to the good part of the book (and the reason why the book gets a good 4 star rating rather than a 2 star one): problems! This book is filled to the brim with tons of exercises that range from routine to fairly difficult (and a special "problems plus" section, outside of the main exercise sets, that range from difficult to nightmarishly difficult). DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Seriously, if you are taking a course with this book, then you owe it to yourself to do the problems that are assigned at the *very least*. They are, for the most part, interesting and will help you build your mathematical ability and, more importantly, understand the material. Do extra problems, think about them, understand what you're doing instead of simply looking for the right thing to plug into. Believe me, it's worth it.

So the final verdict? The text isn't very well written and the examples are pretty poorly chosen (this especially applies to the last 1/3 of the book), but the problem sets are wonderful.

--Ashraf Eassa

50 of 61 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible for the first-time Calculus student April 17, 2008

By Scott

Format:Hardcover

I am a college Calculus instructor, and I find this book terrible for many reasons. For students looking for a solid but much more inviting introduction to Calculus, I highly recommend Larson's book over Stewart's.

Here is a point-by-point breakdown of the faults I find in Stewart's text:

Clarity of Explanation and Content Level

Stewart's explanations are often verbose, unclear, and written at a
level too high for the average Calculus student. Several of my students
have told me reading the book only confused them and did not
clarify the concepts. An introductory text should offer simpler, clearer, and more concise explanations more appropriate to the typical Calculus student.

Presentation

In this day and age, students expect visually engaging presentations that will hold their attention. Stewart's presentations are drab and uninteresting. His book is everywhere packed with dense plain text and
formulas, giving the impression that Calculus is hard, dull, and very
complex, further intimidating students who are already scared of the
subject. Students are much more likely to carefully read a text that is
visually appealing and makes Calculus seem interesting and less
intimidating. This will also help reduce their anxiety over what many
already consider a very difficult course.

Readability

Another important aspect of presentation is layout and readability. Here
Stewart's text is again dismal: His pages are overstuffed with text and
graphics throughout the book, making it difficult to reference a
theorem, particular type of example, etc. It is hard to see where one
example or proof ends and another begins. The average student is not
going to read the entire contents of a section in full detail, but will
rather reference the topics s/he is having trouble with, in order to get
the details on a theorem or to find an example problem to help with a
homework exercise. This is very difficult to do in Stewart's text due to
the crowded and confusing layout.

Homework Exercises

Stewart's text is again particularly poor in terms of his homework sets in that he tends to offer a few low-level problems and then suddenly jump into extraordinarily difficult problems with no warning or transition. Stewart also tends to couch exceedingly difficult problems between a series of relatively straightforward ones, again without warning, which is very frustrating for students who find themselves struggling over what they think is an easy problem.

All in all, I strongly advise against this text, and would urge other Calculus instructors and mathematics departments to choose another Calculus book for their classes.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Grass WAS greener on the other side! January 16, 2010

By I. Jancan

Format:Hardcover

I took the first level of Calculus during my freshman year of college, when this book was used as a required text. It was often confusing in it's working of examples and often skipped steps, as it assumed that the student would understand why. I can see how this would be O.K. for those mathematically inclined, but for me, however, it ended up being a nightmare and I constantly had to get help from the tutoring center in understanding the material. I ended up getting a C in the course at the end of the semester. When it came time to take the second level of Calculus, the textbook was changed to Rogawski's Early Transcendentals. Rogawski was a lot easier to understand, examples were worked in great detail, the text was clear and to the point, and it even provided hints. I ended the class with an A. In addition, this book is quite hefty, making it a chore to drag to school every day. If you are looking for a book that will help you understand the already difficult subject matter better, look elsewhere, preferably to Rogawski.