Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Numerical Methods and Analysis

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

 

 

I would give this book 4 stars, but I had to give it 3 stars to counter the earlier review, which seems to be very skewed.

For the topics that are covered in the book, this book is extremely well written and readable, and it balances practical and theoretical aspects very well. This is not typical for numerical analysis books! Unfortunately, this book lacks some important topics that should be in an introductory textbook. For example, optimization is so important and ubiquitous in numerical computations, and it is no more advanced than eigenvalue problems and PDEs, so it is surprising to me the subject is not even mentioned in the book. Also the book does not have a section on numerical differentiation, but instead scattered it into sections 2.2 and 6.10.1 without introducing the concepts and terminology properly. These deficiencies make the book ill-suited as a primary textbook or a reference book. Heath's Scientific Computing book is at about the same level of exposure as this book and is equally well written, while being far more comprehensive.

I found this text book to be well thought out and presented in a mannor that I could digest more easily. I actually enjoyed (as much as a person can) working these problems. At the end of the semester I had really used this text book and my understading of more advanced math concepts had reached a new level.