Customer Reviews

Complex Variables Demystified

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

 

 

I wish I could give this more stars. Mcmahon's explanations are often quite good, and the use of graphics in helping understand what complex functions look like is nicely done, but: there are still too many typos for me to think this would be useful to someone who did not already know the material. Some of the typos you might be expected to figure out, e.g., an integral should go from negative infinity to positive infinity, not from negative infinity to negative infinity. But there are other, more substantial typos (including what I am almost positive is a mistake in a problem showing how to use residues to do an inverse Laplace Transform.)

Verdict? Maybe wait for the second edition?

Unfortunately, there is a large number of typos and a fair number of mathematical errors in the text. Several examples (e.g., the sole example for Cauchy's integral formulas) seem to be from another book on PDE's rather than for complex analysis. The graphics also need a lot of work to make them better and more illustrative.

Overall, a nice idea, but it needs several rounds of copy-editing and error checking. As it stands, the book is not a good choice for learning about complex variables.

I have to agree with the other reviewers - only I'd give it 2 stars. Most textbooks on this subject seem to be strictly theorem, proof, theorem, proof, etc. with no practical examples. This text offers more, but literally has a serious typo per page. When you're trying to learn complex analysis, it's a bit much to have to decide when the author is wrong.

Prior to purchasing this book I was not understanding complex variables at all. To give some background, I felt calculus 1, 2, and 3 weren't too hard to learn from the textbook alone, the same applies to applied ODE. However for some reason complex variables is much harder to grasp then those others at least for me. This book explains concepts in a straight forward way, with plenty of examples, and is significantly improving my understanding of the subject.

This book is an introduction to complex variables. If you are new to this subject, I strongly recommend this book. It will get you up to speed. I also have a copy of Prof. McMahons book on Matlab, so I'm familiar with his writing style.

This book is not too bad for the undergraduate that needs a little encouragement. The organization is nice but the completeness is not up to standard with most graduate level text books I have seen.