This revision of the market-leading book maintains its classic strengths: contemporary approach, flexible chapter construction, clear exposition, and outstanding problems. Like its predecessors, this revision is written from the viewpoint of the applied mathematician, focusing both on the theory and the practical applications of Differential Equations as they apply to engineering and the sciences.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible text,
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This review is from: Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems-Textbook Only (Hardcover)
This is one of the best math texts I've ever read. I had a horrible teacher for my differential equations class, but this book was so incredibly good that the teacher didn't matter, i taught myself the entire course from this book alone. The authors are very fond of teaching by example, which is exactly how I learn. To introduce a new method or topic, they lay out an example, and methodically go step by step though it, explaining everything that is going on. It's not completely idiot proof though, as sometimes it can be tough to follow, but thus is the nature of differential equations. So if you are looking for a comprehensive text that gives you a fantastic foundation for differential equations, look no further than this book.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not very useful for much at all,
This review is from: Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems-Textbook Only (Hardcover)
I picked this back up after having used it for class about four years ago, and I'm as disappointed now as I was then.
My first impression reading through this was the puzzling organization. The chapter's aren't ordered in a way that's much good for someone who knows nothing about ODE's, and within the chapter's the material is disorganized. For example in the first chapter, when first order linear ODE's are introduced, the first analytical method shown in Leibniz's integration rule. As a 17 year old taking Diff Equ's, this felt like running (or maybe jogging) before walking. Furthermore, the language is stilted in a way that wouldn't make sense to an undergraduate who hasn't taken real or numerical analysis. Which reading it now is alright, but otherwise it's kind of bootstrapping. There are a few other technical mistakes (Euler's method is kind of botched and Step Function is unsatisfying, to name a few). Ultimately this book is really no good for beginners. The emphasis on "Existence and Uniqueness" of solutions isn't useful for much. As a reference, this is really incomplete as well. Chapter's 8 and 9 are the only parts of this book I've found useful, and they're limited. If you're learning this material for the first time I'd recommend Martin Braun's text, or maybe one of the Dover series. Both of those are at least worth hanging on to if you need to relearn anything. Otherwise, my text books on Numerical Analysis books more useful today for ODE's.
1.0 out of 5 stars
This book is awful.,
By
This review is from: Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems-Textbook Only (Hardcover)
This is the worst math textbook I have ever read.I have used many math textbooks over the years, from calculus and number theory to geometry and combinatorics, with varying degrees of enjoyment, and have discovered some general properties: That generally, one must enjoy the math to enjoy the text; and, that even if one enjoys the math, one must be willing to put up with some very dry, detached, and above all boring writing in the course of their studies. This book, however, takes boring to extremes I've never encountered in a subject I enjoy, let alone one that I love. The writing is so bland that it could have been generated with a computer algorithm. I'm not kidding. I don't think I encountered a single personable sentence, or chuckle-worthy phrasing of a statement, or even a non-mechanical adjective in the entire book. The writing offers absolutely nothing to capture the attention of the casual student, not even the corny plays on words so beloved by math professors over the centuries. Further, the content is arranged in a non-intuitive manner, with the authors jumping back and forth between topics in a manner that seems arbitrary. Introductory courses in topics of this complexity will always confuse students to a degree, but the only way to confuse them as thoroughly as this book does is to write a book without a goal in mind, simply jotting down whatever comes to mind first, in the order that it comes to mind, without bothering to perform any sort of check on the logical progression of the topics. The examples and exercises are terrible. I don't think I encountered a single problem of any imagination in this book. I am convinced that the authors brainstormed the most uninteresting physical processes they could think of to illustrate real-life applications of ODEs. I have never hated reading about field mice and owls as much as I did after reading an introductory chapter that dedicated nearly 50% of its space to discussing how field mice levels are affected by owl predation. For authors so unintuitive and unengaging, they are astonishingly long-winded. As a physicist myself, this example was the equivalent of dedicating five pages to a discussion of the speed of a proton moving in a straight line given a certain constant voltage difference. There may as well be a chapter entitled "Good Night Moon". Finally, the book is aesthetically ugly. The cover looks like something from the 80s, while the text layout and typesetting inside the book make the cover look modern in comparison. If you give this book to a freshman math major and tell them "This is your future", they will probably become an economist. I do not know why this book is as popular as it is. All I can reasonably hazard is that people are drawn to it for the fact that it lists all problem solutions in the back, both odd and even. However, this is not a sufficient bonus to give up being able to learn how to do the problems in the first place, which is an area in which this book utterly fails. Don't buy this crap. Get the $15 Dover book instead. It will teach you in one section what this more expensive book fails to teach you in many worthless chapters.
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