Customer Reviews

Differential Equations: Computing and Modeling (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

This book has several problems.
1. There are numerous typos in the text as well as in the solutions printed in the back of the book (and in the solutions manual). It can be very frustrating to puzzle over a problem for a long time only to find you were right and the book was wrong.
2. Several important techniques are only explained as short paragraphs in the exercise section (ie Euler Equation substitution, Reduction of Order, and others). You are left to try and figure out how to apply the vague instructions by looking at the solutions manual or asking someone else. I found this to be the biggest problem with the book.
3. The end of each example or concept is marked by a small red box in the margin of the page. These boxes are easy to miss so the distinction between example and theory, as well as between different aspects of the theory will become blurred unless you pay close attention to when the red boxes appear. Consequently results derived from theory and results derived from specific examples tend to blend together.
4. Often the authors add length to problems by providing the given values in non-SI units and the constants of nature in SI units. While this isn't a serious problem with the book, it would make the book needlessly annoying if you were using it for self study.
For the class that required this book I ended up checking out a different textbook on differential equations from the library to learn from. I only used this one for the questions we were assigned. If you have any choice in the matter I would recommend getting a different book.

I think the strength of this textbook is the amount of material it encompasses: this book is used in two separate courses in my school--introduction to DE and engineering analysis. I didn't appreciate the textbook so much until I completed my differential equations course and then looked back at the sections on mechanical vibrations to review for my physics course. I then realized that the explanations and derivations were extremely satisfying, much more than your average introductory physics text. Also, the emphasis on the qualitative aspects of DEs, such as slope fields and phase portraits, aid in the coneptual understanding of the otherwise rigorous computation aspects of the topic. My only complaint is that the proofs could've been done in a more understandable manner.

Not a bad book at all. Physical applications well explained, theory OK but not as good in my opinion. Unfortunately, contains a fair number of typos, and the book is physically weak (the binding of mine is splitting after only 4 months of use) for a book of this price. Still, pretty good overall.

Luckily I had a very good professor for this class, so I didn't need to depend on the text as much as I might have to in other classes. As an engineering student, I don't ignore theory, but I do need a few more worked examples for the text to be really useful for me. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate rigor and I do like mathematics for its own sake, but, I could have used a little more emphasis on applications than this text provided.

This just isn't helpful for learning DiffEq at all. Yes, it's very "applied" and covers all the topics, but it does so in an extremely short and quick manner. I'm sure the material would be easier with a good professor, but this book is HORRIBLE for self study. It's very hard to follow the writing, since the authors really like to just jump steps without really explaining what's going on. In addition, using the solutions manual doesn't help because they take even MORE shortcuts on that. The typos throughout the book really don't help either. I could be wrong and just be horrible at math, but I figure that if I've made it up to a class like this, I can't be bad enough that it's just me that can't understand the book very well. Granted I have an A in the class, but I think that with a much better textbook I could've gotten to this point with much less effort (and less strained eyes)

The introductory chapter is relatively well written, however the book quickly devolves. The authors seem more bent on showing the reader how great they are at math, and less at teaching. Examples are convoluted and incomplete given the problem sets that follow; important theory is left as homework problems in the individual sections (such as reduction of order), and then the reader is left to wonder if he/she actually performed this exercise correctly; there are numerous textual and factual errors within the book; and, the student solutions companion book is of little help, as the authors routinely skip important steps, and reduce the manual to little more than a list of answers (sans explanation).

I thought this book was very helpful. Granted, I had a great professor but still, the book works enough examples to get the idea of how to do the problems. That leaves the teacher with the job of explaining the theories.
Whenever the book lacked theory explanation, it gave you a list of sources to research to find extra explanation.

I liked it but like I said, I had a gr8 professor, this review might have been different if otherwise.

If anyone needs a good Calc 3 book, buy the Howard Anton addition. I had a good theory teaching professor for that class but he VERY RARELY worked examples. This book is very good if you have to learn how to do the work by yourself (if you have a teacher like mine was; he was good for theory but left us alone to learn how to do the calc).
Hope this helped!!

I love this textbook. It is short, contains exactly what you need it to and doesn't try to dazzle readers with flashy and unnecessary pictures (only two colors used in the text, really readable). Another plus, it is chock full of example code for differential equations (Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB, etc). ALSO get the solution manual

I am taking a differential equations course, so had to buy this text book. I expected it to be a newer, more straightforward approach to solving differential equations. Instead I found a hotchpotch of old style math with some half baked graphics. The books does not have the rigorous organization of older textbooks; and it does not provide greater understanding of the math through graphics and modeling. This book does not even provide good example problems to help me adequately with the problems at the end of the chapter. Throw in the frustration of typographical errors - and you have a book that does not do a competent job of teaching undergraduates. My opinion is that this is a great reference book for somebody who already knows the math - and wants to look at examples.
I am going to give my instructor a very poor evaluation for choosing this as a textbook.

This book was used in an introduction to differential equations, and was of very little reference value. The theory is extremely distant from application, and the scientific and engineering motivations for solving differential equations are not apparent. If a concept was missed in lecture, it was often an ordeal to attempt to learn from the book.