Calculus: Preliminary Edition [Paperback]

Robert Decker (Author), Dale E. Varberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 013287640X | ISBN-13: 978-0132876407 | Publication Date: March 15, 1996 | Edition: Preliminary ed

For a one or two term freshman or sophomore calculus course for engineering or science majors.A second generation reform text, Decker/Varberg is designed to motivate an intuitive understanding of calculus topics with the aid of visualization technology and rich problems and applications. Stronger than all other texts in its coverage of numeries.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A second generation reform text, Decker/Varberg is designed to motivate an intuitive understanding of calculus topics with the aid of visualization technology and rich problems and applications.

From the Back Cover

A second generation reform book, Decker/Varberg is designed to motivate an intuitive understanding of calculus topics with the aid of visualization technology and rich problems and applications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 651 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall College Div; Preliminary ed edition (March 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 013287640X
• ISBN-13: 978-0132876407
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,840,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for Students and Instructors, December 15, 2005

By 

Dave - See all my reviews

This review is from: Calculus, 8th Edition (Textbook Binding)

When I was 15, this was the book that I taught myself Calculus from. Now that I'm a professor, this is the book that I use to teach Calculus. In this review I will give the pros and cons of using this book from both a student's and teacher's perspective.

A Student's Perspective

When learning Calculus, I read every page of this book and did every problem. Students will complain that examples and discussion in each chapter seem inadequate to do all of the problems at the end of the section. I feel that this is part of the design of this book. The problems are intended to be instructional. Indeed this book has a corresponding student solutions manual that helps students to check their work and see if they are "getting it". The problems in the book range from extremely elementary up to moderately challenging. If, instead of instructional problems, this book had given enough examples and text to explain all of the ideas, it would have to be over 2000 pages long. Students should think of the problems in each section as being part of the instruction instead of problems to test previously acquired skills.

When teaching myself from this book, I was able to do all but a few of the problems. Granted I had to spend a considerable amount of time struggling with some of them, but for a talented and dedicated student, every problem in the book is accessible and most are extremely instructive. I should also mention that the book is very well written. Having never actually read a math text book from cover to cover back then, I didn't have too much problem tackling this one. It's very rare that a math text be thorough, informative, and easy to read. This one manages to be all three.

The main drawback of the book is that the students solutions manual is absolutely essential and will be an additional cost. Even if money is tight, as it often is for students, make certain that you buy this manual.


A Teacher's Perspective

As I said above, the problems in this book are intended to be instructional. For this reason it is imperative that a teacher not just lecture from the text and examples, but dig into the problems and carefully choose the most instructive ones for in-class presentations or homework assignments. If you only lecture from the text and examples, you'll only be teaching your class a small fraction of what this book has to offer. If you use this for a course, do as many examples as you have time for. I dedicate one lecture per week to doing nothing but working problems. It might be best to work though the even numbered problems for your class, as the odd numbered ones all appear in the student solutions manual.

The layout of the book is a little bit flawed. This book is aimed at three semester Calculus sequences in state universities and liberal arts colleges. It is not a meant to challenge exceptionally bright students. For this reason parts of chapter 2 seem inappropriate- specifically the sections on the rigorous definition of limits and continuity. If you're teaching a calculus course to non-math majors at modest universities, why would you force students to wade through the muck of mathematical proofs of continuity and existence of limits? In my experience the students absolutely hate this part of the course and gain nothing from it. If you have a few bright kids in your class, you can work with them on an independent study of the more theoretical areas such as this. Also, there are few chapters in the book that are out of place. For example, the chapter on integrating to find the volumes and surface areas of solids of revolution comes way too early while the chapters on transcendental functions, inverse functions, and L'Hopital's Rule come way to late.

Overall the presentation of new ideas is very good in this book, with one notable exception. The book introduces the natural logarithm (ln x) through it's definition in terms of the antiderivative of 1/x. From there it uses the inverse function theorem to derive the exponential function and it's properties. I, and my students, find it more natural to define the Euler number, e, in terms of continuously compounded interest, and then derive the natural logarithm and its properties from the exponential function. It's a matter of taste, but the later approach seemed more lucid to my students. You may want to supplement your lectures in this way.

One of my favorite features of this book is that not only does it cover all the material from a traditional three semester Calculus sequence, but it also has chapters on analytical and numerical solutions to ordinary differential equations as well as an appendix containing more theoretical material for brighter students. If you find yourself teaching an unusually talented bunch of kids, the appendix on mathematical induction as well as the aforementioned sections on ODEs and proofs of continuity and existence of limits can make great supplements to challenge those eager to dive into mathematics.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Buy Swokowski's Calculus instead., September 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Calculus with Analytic Geometry (Hardcover)

It's hard to believe that this puzzling, error-filled book is in its 7th edition.

I've been using the book for two semesters in a distance learning program. In this setting, where the reader needs to learn from the book rather than from an instructor, the book is inadequate. It's single strength - brevity - doesn't make up for its weaknesses: mystifying explanations, worked examples that omit important steps, and errors. Many times, this book made me laugh out loud when, after literally hours of effort, I finally understood what the authors were trying to communicate. There is no way I could have completed my classes had I not had Swokowski to refer to.

Beyond these weaknesses, the book is loaded with throw-away Horatio Algerisms ("Skill at this, like most worthwhile activities, depends on practice.") and hokey humor ("We have no desire to let this text suffer from the standard ailment of older texts, called `revisionitis.'") These give the book a dated, musty feel: it's as if you are looking back at how calculus used to be taught 40 years ago.

Finally, six weeks into the first semester, the binding failed, converting the book into an expensive, 900-page, loose-leaf folder. Overall, not a book I enjoyed spending time with.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I am simply not impressed., January 9, 2001

By 

Kyle E. Kneisl (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Calculus, 8th Edition (Textbook Binding)

The professor from the University of Wisconsin makes good points. We have long since adopted this textbook at the University of North Carolina, where I have taught from this text for about 5 years. This text appeals to the professional mathematician in an almost irresistible way as it elucidates clearly those aspects of basic calculus which appeal to US as mathematicians---namely, there is a fairly rigorous discussion of Riemann integration, there is dogged attention to historical factoids, and so forth---aspects lacking from other texts. However, my students are universally non-plussed. Every semester, my evaluations are CHOCK full of students who specific comment that they didn't like their text and were actually using a different text that they checked out of the library. That, unfortunately, is the proof in the pudding. My students dislike the text, universally. In the book's favor however, as mentioned by the professor from Wisconsin, the topic order is very logical, the book is as small as it can be, it does its best to take some advantage of calculator technology, and treats most topics rigorously. I am sure however that the advantages of this book are largely lost on the students. I myself would advocate for a different text, if it were up to me. I have seen no reason to justify this fairly expensive book in lieu of one of the somewhat cheaper standard texts.