Customer Reviews

Guide to Essential Math: A Review for Physics, Chemistry and Engineering Students (Complementary Science)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a clear and concise review of college-level mathematics for engineers and scientists.

In my opinion there are are 2 areas of weakness in the book:

1. A lack of exercises and problems. The author says this is "by design", but for the target audience - those that have forgotten math they were taught earlier - the need to look elsewhere for practice becomes tedious. As we all know you cannot learn math by reading - you need to "do" it.

2. The treatment of matrices is too terse and uncomprehensive and needs expanding.

Other than that, however, this is a good little book for dipping into when you need to quickly refresh concepts that you might have forgotten.
I am still looking for the holy grail - a math college level book that is concise yet comprehensive with good practice sets.
Perhaps I'll write one myself :-))

If the purpose of this handbook is to provide some review of various mathematical concepts of varying complexity and to demonstrate their usefulness in a variety of contexts in the physical sciences and engineering--this book provides an enlightening answer. If on the other hand, it is intended to provide a tutorial to students in these disciplines who may have failed to comprehend some ancillary mathematical tools, or if it is intended as a reference for practicing professionals who need to refresh on a particular technique, I believe this text may be less satisfactory. It certainly isn't a comprehensive handbook of mathematical methods like the old Soviet Mir Press handbooks, nor is it a Schaum's Outline with a carefully graduated solved examples and problems for further study. It is an interesting study of a senior faculty member's career of teaching and research in using mathematics for the physical sciences. I am however, a little baffled about the intended audience, and the problems it expects to address in the practitioner's application of mathematical methods.

This book touches on most of the basic mathematical concepts but most importantly reviews topics that have practical applications in (as the title says) Physics, Chemistry and Engineering.

The book is written in a very concise and easy to understand way provinding various examples to illustrate the mathematical concept behind the discussed topic.

I am out of engineering school for 11 years now and I find this to be a good refresher for my math knowledge. Since it is so concise, it is suitable for people that have a basic knowledge already of the principles presented.

To be a great value, this book should cost between $15-20. The price of over $40 at the time of this review is unjustified.

I enjoyed most of this book thoroughly. The author's conversational style helps one get the gist of Calc I,II,III with Differential Equations. However, as some reviewers have stated this is a review text and not a regular math textbook. Therefore if you are not reasonably familiar with the topics covered you will be lost for sure. For example, my knowledge of Differential Equations is meagre and rusty and I was lost in that section.

Yes, as stated by others there are no problems and that does hurt one's uptake quite a bit. I understand that being a "guide" text the problems were omitted but that works if you are VERY familiar with the topic. However, if you have not visited the area for years not having problems will definitely hurt your understanding like it did mine on Diff Equations.

The book represents a nice selection of mathematical topics which are at the same time useful, and pleasing to readers from neighboring fields; even to the public at large. While this includes topics from standard undergraduate courses, the presentation here is especially accessible. All of it within 275 pages.
It offers a friendly presentation of such topics as algebra of the number system, trigonometry and analytic geometry, a calculus crash course, one and several variables, differential equations and the bare essentials of linear algebra. Even a little complex numbers. Reviewed by Palle Jorgensen, Sept 2009.

The title pretty much sums up the content of this book. This is a very handy reference to mathematical concepts and formulas that are important for Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering Students. The "Click to Look Inside" tool above shows the table of contents which tells you which mathematical concepts and formulas are covered.

It would important to note that this book is designed to be a quick reference and review for students already familiar with these mathematical principles and formulas; it's not designed to teach new material. This is the sort of book a Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering student would keep handy for the times when they need a quick refresher on how and where to use a particular mathematical formula.

From the back cover: "This book reminds students in junior, senior and graduate level courses in physics, chemistry and engineering of the math they may have forgotten (or learned imperfectly) which is needed to succeed in science courses."

So first off this book is a reminder (and reference) and exercises are not needed and not desired. They'd just make the book fat and unsuitable for carrying around all the time. So criticisms from reviewers on that account are misplaced.

I have to agree with other reviewers that the chapter on Matrix Algebra could me much clearer. I'm quite sure of this because I used it with other references precisely as a reminder/review of that subject. My other sources were Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers, 3,000 Solved Problems in Linear Algebra, Schaum's Outline of PreCalculus, 2nd Ed. (Schaum's Outline Series), and Pocket Book of Integrals and Mathematical Formulas, 4th Edition. For what it's worth none of these books had a fully satisfactory reference section on matrices. How hard can it be?

Based on my serious use of the Matrix chapter and shallower review of other chapters I'm rating this at 4 stars. A book like this really needs to have you covered. It needs to have what you need when you need it. A book of this type that falls short in any major area like matrices can't be rated at 5. But, until I can find something better I can recommend this book. I'm sure I'll be using for other things.

Please note the word "review" in the subtitle. I found that for the math I had actually studied, this was indeed a useful review. But for something I didn't already know, I didn't find this book to be a very good place to start -- there just isn't space in a small book with broad coverage for really developing and motivating a topic.

Some things I liked:
- the informal tone of the book
- useful (usually) diagrams
- in particular the unit circle diagram included the tangent and secant lines, giving me a geometric intuition about those functions that I never had before
- he gives the basic idea first, then goes into the "fine print" -- very nice
- the typesetting is generally excellent (except -- uggh! -- for a few places where they tried to highlight text in shaded boxes, but the shading is so dark I had to move to better lighting to read what it says!)

Some things I didn't:
- forward references (e.g. early on he gets into some heady stuff about primes, and in the next chapter tells you what primes are)
- at times it was hard for me to tell where the author was going, i.e. a better transition or connective would have helped
- no doubt for brevity, the author skips steps, sometimes leaving the reader with a bit of a puzzle to figure out what just happened

Also understand that this book does *not* contain, as you might expect from the title, worked-out examples of physics/chemistry/engineering problems. It is not that kind of book at all. This book is kind of like the beginnings of ten books on the kinds of math scientists and engineers will need, minus the tedious definitions and proofs, presented more informally. It is reasonably well executed.

Finally, the price seems kind of high for the size of book, but if what you need is a quick informal review of lots of math that would be useful in science and engineering, this might be just the ticket.

I bought this book because I'm going back to school for BS in Physics. I haven't had any math or physics classes in a long time and wanted a nice review. This book is great; however, I do not recommend it for a beginners review. This book is a review for students who have already taken the math...not people just getting into the math! I'm glad I bought the book though, because I'll be needing it here in a couple years! For math beginners...I recommend the "For Dummies" series.

I got this book for my wife as a review for more advanced math. She thought it was an excellent book to review in preparation for advanced calculus classes.