Customer Reviews

Elementary Surveying: An Introduction to Geomatics, 10th Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

As an educator of over 20 years, I have used many elementary texts on surveying. This is by far the most comprehensive and easy to understand book for the student wishing to learn from the basics to advanced surveying topics. One of the things that I like about this book is that I have found it is applicable to both the on campus courses at the University of Wyoming as well as the off campus courses that we offer to experienced, practicing surveyors around the country. The topics are just as suited for my students in Florida as they are in New York, California, Mississippi or Hawaii, and that's saying a lot since the laws are different in all regions of the country. I have found that using this book has been very easy to present material useful to students taking the classes in any state while preparing for the FLS or LS exam, because it covers the topics to about the right amount of depth as the exam expects the examinee to comprehend. The only downfall of the book as I see it is that there are numerous wrong answers (in the back of the book)to the selected homework problems that answers are provided for. This can be frustrating at times as you can imagine. If you can find me, I'd be happy to forward a list of these erroneous answers, and the correct answers. This might be very useful for other educators. As per the rules of posting reviews, I can't put my email address on here. Bummer.

Surveying is the foundation of all of civilisations. The world would not be the same without the methods of surveying used by proffessionals.

This book was an essential refference during my study at university and is still used in my professional carrer.

From the first page you will be learning varrious ellements of surveying. The explination of fundumental elements of surveying methods and the changes to surveying caused by technology are explained at the start to give a foundation from which to work from. The different types of surveying is explained in good detail covering the concepts of bearings, angle measurement and lots of others. The covering of work related area's and problems are discussed and covered. This includes curves and roads, mapping and photogrammetry along with sections relating to area and volume determination.

There is numerous pictures, illustrations and diagrams used to show the equipment and show the concepts covered.

If I was starting my education in surveying or wishing to have a good refference then this should be reccomended as a text worth holding in your library.

I have been using this book for six months in two different courses, and have nearly completed it.

While the content is fine, the number of errata in this book should not be tolerated.

On the book's web page, numerous errata are listed, but there are many more that have not been reported or compiled. While trying to study this book, the errata keep getting in the way of understanding the material, as there are wrong equations, bad tables, etc.

This book is in its tenth printing, and it is simply inexcusable that this many errata are allowed to remain in the book after so many printings.

Another reviewer (an educator who has the edition with answers in the back) mentioned the number of incorrect answers in the educators edition as well.

So, if you have a choice, look elsewhere for an elementary surveying text. The authors and/or publishers of this one obviously do not care enough to correct the numerous errors which confuse the student.

I am shocked that there are ANY positive reviews, and am highly suspect of the five star ones.

This book needs massive amounts of editing. There are few examples of equations and concepts; of the few that are, about a third of them are incorrect in one form or another (either they refer back to the wrong data, they skip steps, simply get the math wrong...). This is infuriating. I would like to see many more logically worked out examples, if they can manage to get it straight themselves before printing. On chapter review questions, only a very few have answers in the appendix; these are simple answers, not worked out, and not surprisingly, often incorrect.

Also, this book seems to go out of it's way to explain concepts in the most complex manner possible. If it could choose between a ten word sentance an entry level engineering student or even layman could understand, or two paragraphs of engineering-ese, it'll choose the latter.

This book has potential to be very good, with development and editing. Just amazing that it's in it's eleventh printing, reads like a diassembled beta copy. AWFUL.

This book is sorely lacking at two levels: 1) There are too many errors 2) many concepts are not clearly explained. I have two degrees in electrical engineering and decided to go back and get my Masters in Civil Engineering. The graduate coordinator required me to take the elementary surveying course and this was the required book. I got an A in the course, but please believe me it wasn't a result of this 11th edition.

It is both inexcusable and shocking that there are so many errors within the book. You would think that by the 11th edition they would have corrected the many errors. Someone needs to sit down with the editor and have a long talk.

One thing I've noticed by looking at my father's engineering books of the 40's, my EE books of the early 80s and the new books this era, overall the books have vastly improved in the ability to explain concepts to the students. This book reminds me of my EE books of the 80s.

Normally I would be so gruff and negative, but I was surprised by the amount of good reviews and thought I should put in my $0.02.

this book is terrible! There are very few helpful illustrations, some simply don't exist ie in the defining of angles and their relationships! for some problems/projects that are fairly involved, several completely different data sets are used, so if you were confused about something on one step you cannot derive understanding from the completion of the problem. So, you are forced to rely on the horrible text written partially in crat -things are explained in the longest possible way! The author and our instructor use different terms, it is awful.

My tip: rely on lectures and labs and don't miss a single one, get a study budy or work with your lab partner immediately after class. AVOID USING THIS BOOK IF IT CONFUSES YOU like it does me. I came to this class with a fair understanding most of this already but the book muddles it up so bad I was forced to abandon use of it.

This is a pretty poor example of a surveying textbook. Explanations are not thorough and adequate examples are lacking for many of the concepts. This is a required text for many of the surveying courses at Michigan Tech and it's time for the department to adopt a new text. I do not recommend this book.

This is the worst text book I have ever used. There are many problems with it. Many of the problems are vauge and unclear in what they are asking. The explainations are confusing and unclear. There are even typos in the book. For each chapter, only about 5 answers are given to the homework problems. This makes it hard to know of you are doing the work correctly. This book is poorly written and extremly over priced. If you can avoid buying it please do. There has to be a better surveying text than this.

I graduated form a Tech. school that used this book as the source of study. I thought that it, with the help of my instructor, was a great refrence. I still use it today to look up anything from state plane coordinates to legal descriptions.

over all its a good book to have.

In my opinion this work is simply the best introductory surveying textbook available, and I've seen more than a few.