14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Decent., May 17, 2007
This review is from: Essential Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Stewart's Calculus Series) (Hardcover)
If you'll notice above, the description states it is a book meant to be as concise as possible, which I believe the author definitely achieved. However, this drive to be as small as possible without lacking 'essential' topics is cheating to the beginning calculus student. Concepts should be thoroughly explained and end of chapter questions should match or slightly exceed the level of difficulty of the explained concepts in the chapter - not heavily exceed it, this is where I took off a star. I understand that the goal of end of chapter questions is to challenge the student, but the lack of thorough explanations in an effort to be as concise as possible does not prepare the student for these questions, in my opinion. Therefore, I had to seek out other materials.
In the end, I found this book to laid out very well and amazingly, for a math book, somewhat easy to read. I supplemented this book with the Idiots Guide to Calculus, which was a life saver on certain topics and went even further with Stewart's Solution Manual for this book. The purchasing of these two additional books, I hope, may be an indicator of the lack of thoroughness for achieving as small a book as possible.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic book, if used correctly., June 25, 2009
This review is from: Essential Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Stewart's Calculus Series) (Hardcover)
I debated for quite a while about whether this was a 4 or 5 star book, in reality it's probably about 4.5
I used this book for Calculus 1, 2, and 3.
THE GOOD:
Almost no errata -- This book was amazingly consistent, very high quality here, almost no errors in it.
Comprehensive -- This book did a very good job of being thorough about the topics it covered.
Concise -- Even though it was thorough, it wasn't extremely long, the sections were split small enough that it was fairly easy to get through.
No faith required -- Lots of proofs, which is what I need, I'm a skeptic. I thought the proofs really added to the book, whenever they would say something I was skeptical about, I walk through their proofs to see that it was valid. These proofs were very helpful IMO.
Questions reflect material -- The questions that were asked were almost always directly related or relevant to the material, it wasn't very often I got to the questions and felt overwhelmed.
THE BAD:
Layout -- Minimal use of colours and whitespace, every page looked the same as every other page, which made parsing the material a little bit taxing.
Not good for reference -- This book is great for learning, but I had a very hard time going back later to locate tidbits of relevant information. (The appendixes were very good in this regard, though)
OVERALL:
In Calculus 1, I didn't use this book correctly, and really struggled. I had gotten in the habit during pre-calculus of just jumping right into the questions, and whenever I got stuck, looking back at the examples. That does not work with this book, you will be lost and overwhelmed, and spend more time in the end.
Instead, read through the whole section, when you come to the proofs, see what they are trying to prove, sit down yourself and try to prove it, and whenever you get stuck, look at the proofs they have done for you. Whenever you come to any of the example questions in the book, do the same thing, try to solve on your own, then look back at what they did. This is what I did in Calc 2 and Calc 3, and I found that it worked immensely better. I spent less time, put less effort in, and learned the material better. When I got to Calc 3, I got through the entire course this way, I didn't listen in class (instead, I studied for my English course, which was right after Calc), and every night I just went home and read the section we were covering the next day. I was doing this every day (summer course), and it seemed to take me about 2 to 4 hours to go through the section and do the homework, so expect to spend some time on it. But the point here is that the book was good enough, itself, that I was able to learn from the book without the aid of the classroom. If you can tune your instructor out well enough, it might even be beneficial to just study the book in class, you'll probably have to do it anyway, and it will probably be more productive.
You will still be stumped by some problems at times, so it is necessary to have a support network. You'll probably still need to go see your instructor on occasion, maybe find a good forum like [...], etc. It might also be helpful to buy the study guide, I didn't, because I am stubborn, but it could have been a really useful tool, I think.
Anyway, I do endorse this book, I was very pleased with it, this book along with a [...]calculator, and my obsessive learning style got me A's in all three calc courses. (Though I will admit I got to the point of not caring at the end, because it was all about vectors, which were relevant to the engineering students, and I'm a CS student).
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great examples, useful reference sheets, September 26, 2009
This review is from: Essential Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Stewart's Calculus Series) (Hardcover)
This book was required for my Calculus II course, and would also be used for Calc I (if I had taken it), as well as Calc III.
So far, around 1/3 of the way through the semester, I have found the book to be very helpful. Whenever I had questions about some of the material, I found it was more useful to refer to the book, than my notes. There are 5 tear out reference sheets found in the front/back, which are great for referring back to. Unfortunately, since they are tear-out, this means that if you want them you'll have to buy the book new. It was worth it to me since there were also three classes that would use it.
The formatting of the book is excellent, making it easy to see which points are key, and find formula's when you're simply skimming. I highly recommend this book. It loses the 1 star because the reference sheets are tear-out.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
