Customer Reviews

Differential Equations and Linear Algebra

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

 

 

This book's attempts to teach anything do anything but teach. Each section has about ten pages of explanation followed by a bunch of problems. Unfortunately the explanations do anything but explain to people that are trying to learn math. If you're a math wiz you might be able to decrypt what they're talking about, but as a student I had no idea. In the examples the authors often use explanations such as "it is obvious that..." and "we remember from..." The lack of explanation (mainly laziness on the authors' part) makes it very hard to follow what they're talking about, and the problems afterwards often expect the reader to know things that weren't discussed or appeared as a one-sentence blurp in the margin. So unless you're a massochist or already know this stuff like the back of your hand and need a reference guide, spend your money someplace else.

Unless you use this book straight away after taking an intensive Calculus II course, you're going to have absolutely no clue how they are doing any of the problems. They leave the "explanations" at an unacceptably high-level abstraction so that only those very freshly well-versed in Calculus can venture an understanding. Also contains no refreshers, not even a simple list of common integrals or integration formulas from Calculus. Just a crappy book, in my opinion.

This is by far the worst calc book I've ever had! it assumes it's readers already know many IMPORTANT concepts, so the lazy author just simply omits many explanations. Also, the examples are very easy, BUT the exercises are very hard. After completing about half of this book, I did not learn any concepts. None. Nada.

This textbook has a number of problems:
1: It's expensive. I paid over $70, used, here on Amazon - it's over $120 new at the campus book store. This is particularly bad when you compare it to my other engineering calculus book, Thomas' Calculus 9th/Alternate edition - which is not only far cheaper (under $50, in good condition), it's also more than twice as long as Farlow's Diff. EQ.

2: It's *extremely* technical. The descriptions are designed for a mathematics major. I am an engineering major - for my purposes, it is more important to understand the material and develop problem-solving skills than it is to learn abstract high-level mathematical concepts. Having technical descriptions is fine, but this text doesn't follow them up with "quick and dirty" methods and formulas. Thomas' Calculus, 9th ed., is far more approchable in this regard.

3: The examples suck. They are too easy, too watered down, and there aren't enough of them. The text expects us to transform a few simple examples into the knowledge to do a whole series of complex problems.

4: The problems are hard. Very hard. Sometimes, new concepts are introduced with a sentence or two *right in the problem set*.

The purpose of the text is to teach the material and compliment the lectures by providing realistic problems. This text does neither.

This is by far the absolute worst math book I have ever had the misfortune of using. The discussions teach everything using either completely abstract formulae or by using the absolute easiest example of that problem type. Then you get to the questions, which expect you to have mastered the concept of the preceding 10 pgs or so and be able to extrapolate these concepts to other topics (which the book offers no explanation of how to do). Overall, I would say you're better off learning this material from your cat's litter box, as it will probably make more sense. Also, i'm sure your cat put more effort into its litter box than the author's of this text put into writing this text.

The problems with this book are:

Most of the examples are in abstract form or are the easiest problems of its type. This provides no help when it comes to solving actual problems as the reader finds themselves faced with a very challenging question while have never seen that type of problem solve before.

The style of the wiring is technical, very difficult to follow, and very jargon filled. The reader will find themselves reading the same sentence over and over trying to decipher what the heck the author is saying.

The things that are not described in technical writing are described in very abstract and confusing definitions. The author uses many definitions the explain things, the they are so pitifully complexly written it defeats their purpose.

Lastly and MOSTLY, every other sentence or example is filled with referenced to other examples, sections, and sentences, that the reader has to jump all around the book recall what the author is referencing. These also lead to many things being described as " It is obvious that..." Or " From example 2 we saw that...". A few are ok, but almost ALL text and examples use this shortcut style.

Its vague, complex, and confusing.

There are other books that combine the topics of differential equations and linear algebra but this is the only one that does it well. My professor said this is the only book that covers chaos and control theory well and I believe it after looking at other books.

I found this book to be head and shoulders above the other books in its class. It is far more mature and is an excellent book for the serious student.