Customer Reviews

Elementary Differential Equations (5th Edition)

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

 

 

With the sixth edition of this textbook, Edwards and Penney have made significant strides with interesting examples and chapter problems that can challenge one not only from a mathematical standpoint but also from concepts regarding physics, fluid mechanics, population growth, radioactive decay, etc.

As a teacher, I say that this is a very user-friendly book for an instructor who teaches differential equations as a three-hour college course. The introductory sections are a very good refresher for those who need to brush up on their calculus, especially in working with integrals and derivatives concerning natural logarithms. In each chapter, the range of the problems seems apt. Too often in so many publications are there relatively easy problems only to be followed immediately by exercises that are at an astronomical degree of difficulty for the student and many a professor.

Perhaps the main weaknesses are underscored by the amount of self-discipline an undergraduate might need to read and understand the theory thus application of the topics if he or she is not receiving added guidance from a tutor or quality instructor. This is not entirely a self-explanatory reference, but differential equations is not exactly an introductory level course; and I believe that Edwards and Penney did assimilate a great set of examples and exercises such that even if the material is difficult to grasp, the challenges posed are so relevant to daily life that one who cares to become a specialist in the sciences will be prone to try overriding any difficulties to at least gain a better understanding of the physical phenomena surrounding him or her.

As added kudos, with this volume, Edwards and Penney have helped me to gain a level of appreciation and joy in encountering engineering problems. Though it is pricey for its size, "Elementary Differential Equations" does provide adequate frames of reference without being bogged down with graphs or numerical tables that are not well displayed or explained. All in all, this is an excellent cross-training reference for those who want to enhance their mathematical skills while still developing their technical skills in engineering and various physical sciences.

I used this book in a required Diff Eq class at the University. Between the horrendous professor and this wretched book, nobody passed the class. Something to make clear, though, is that this book is downright difficult to understand. The questions are practical, and the formulas are sound, but everything in between is awful.

The tone with which this text is written leaves you feeling like a high school reject for not already understanding how to solve a "non-homogeneous linear 2nd order differential equation". The methods that they use are hard to follow at best, and orienting yourself in the jumble of paragraphs makes it all the more difficult to try making the subject bearable.

I took the class elsewhere, they used Fundamentals of Differential Equations (8th Edition), and that text was infinitely more enjoyable than this overpriced paperweight.

What a bad book to learn Diff Eq with! It might be ok to buy if you already know the subject but lots of initial steps in the sample problems are left out "assuming" you know where to go. Which leaves you hopelessly lost if you don't. I ended up searching other books online just to make it through my course. Waste of money!

very good book , but you really need to take the whole semester to do justice to the course.
the book arrived promptly and was in great condition and well packed

I actually got this book about a month before my class started so I could get a jump start on my Diff Eq. class. You literally need to search through other text books and Cramster was a great help "decoding" this book. The examples skip steps, or worse they start on about a topic with an example problem and by the end it's doing proofs and they completely forget the example STARTED with a problem. It's like starting an epic novel and halfway through the author forgets what their writing about and finishes with their grocery list. It's very frustrating. The solutions manual was worthless as well. They skip important steps and by the end you are spending twice as long trying to figure out how they got to certain steps. Then there are certain techniques that they literally never explain, but they are used to solve certain problems. So assuming someone only has THIS book for learning differential equations it would literally be impossible to learn the material. Impossible.

Just an awful awful book in my opinion. As was said by someone else this book is like a table of contents for differential equations and leaves out the actual information. Anyone that can honestly say they are taking differential equations for the first time and understood this book is probably a plant for the publisher or are a math major and already understood the material either way they are lying ;).

I found this text to be more of an outline of topics regarding differential equations. In point of fact I used two other texts (Schaum's and Boyce/DiPrima's) to actually learn the material and this book as an ordered list of topics which is pathetic when you feel you've spent $100 for a table of contents.

The explanations of example solutions seemed incomplete or jumbled in which inferential leaps were made leaving the reader lost. For example, when learning to verify functions as solutions to a give differential equation, the first example doesn't even speak of the verification process and example two states: "The verification is routine; we omit it here." The example problems here are back-to-back with no intermediate text involving any explanation.

The two stars I have given this book are for one thing only: this text does an excellent job of covering a very wide range of applications. As a rocket scientist, I enjoy seeing dedicated sections on rocket propulsion, which is included along with sections on mechanical vibrations, electrical circuits, typical physics, oscillations, and ecological and population models.

Overall, this text is too expensive for the material provided and, I believe, poorly written. However, for students, if it is available in your school library, the application problems presented are well worth checking out.

Just like the title says, but this is a good book to own with the text.

This book was purchased for my college student who is away at school. It was cheaper here than it was at his local bookstore. It took about a week to get to him, which was longer than we hoped but it was in great condition.