Customer Reviews

Introduction to the Calculus of Variations (Dover Books on Mathematics)

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

 

 

I used this book as a compliment to a Theoretical Mechanics course. The section on Hamilton's equations is especially well written. Although probably more mathematically rigorous than anything I needed, the style is so silky smooth that anyone interested in mathematical physics will surely enjoy it. And it will be a surprise for many to find that the "proof" of equivalence between the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations presented in most texts is half incomplete.
The book is complemented by good examples, clear notation and quite a number of graphics. Of course, proofs and arguments are absolutely rigorous, but well explained. This is a mathematics text, after all. I strongly recommend it, as well as any other of Sagan's books.

This book is a more thorough treatment of the calculus of variations than some of the other books on the subject that you could buy. It's bit more expensive... I especially reccomend this book if you like Sagan's other book "Boundary and Eigenvalue Problems in Mathematical Physics". If you like his style of writing, and I do, he again shows nice touch of explaining the material in writing and then with examples. A good book with a nicely written and more thorough treatment of the subject (unless you want a full price text that is)..

This book is neither too naive nor too brief, still I was able to read more than 80 pages in one day, simply because it is written very clearly. An excellent introduction in Calculus of variations, very concise and very clear. Some context is devoted to control theory, which can be considered as a generalization of calculus of variations.
The part on field embedding and Hilbert invariant integral is perfectly wriiten, actually the best that I have ever encountered.

I really like ("plain") books that are written in the definition, lemma, proposition, theorem, and examples style. Sagan does enunciate propositions, theorems, etc. but he does that after giving proofs for the things he will state latter. I simple don't like this style. Another point that I really dislike in Sagan book is the notation. He doen't change the notation, for instance, when he talks about a function y and the y coordinate. This is a little bit boring. Moreover, the exercises aren't stated clearly (I always have to look at the text, many pages before the exercise, to know what the exercise demands to be done). Besides this the book is very complete. A good but that could be better.

I really couldn't get into this book. And I tried others and they weren't much better. This just must be a tough subject to write about. It comes across as an applied analysis text at the 1st year graduate level. the problems are sometimes hard to decode; once you know what he's asking they don't take much time. but it's tough to figure out what he's asking.

i'll keep looking.