Customer Reviews

Mathematical Methods in Chemical Engineering (Topics in Chemical Engineering)

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This has to rank as one of the most poorly written, disorganized textbooks I have ever had the misfortune of purchasing and attempting to use. I know many students complain about textbooks that we are oftentimes made to purchase unwillingly but usually I just grin and bear the pain for the moment and consider the book to be an addition to my library, possible for some use as a future reference...but in the case of this book I only hope that I can unload it on somebody. I've taken engineering math at the undergraduate and graduate level and found the texts used in those clases (O'Neil, Kreysig) althought not perfect, 1E3 times better than this book which is supposed to be aimed at chemical engineering students (which I am/was). The layout is bad with little continuity with respect to covered topics, the examples are basically useless with many of the basic derivations left-out and the explanations lack clarity. If these guys are ChEng professors they should stay away from writing mathematic texts and leave it to the mathematicians.

As a current grad student I have had the misfortune of encountering this book. This book is horrible even by math book standards. As others have said, it is poorly organized, doesn't explain the concepts well, doesn't actually teach how to go about solving problems, and examples skip too many steps. Every grad student has seen or heard these dreaded words: "(insert equation) can be solved easily to arrive at (insert completely different eqation minus the ten or twenty preceeding steps)" This book is filled with those instances. Professors, if you are caring enough to read this, care enough about your students NOT to get this book.

Being a grad student, I have used many textbooks in my life, and I can honestly say this ranks as the absolute worse one I have ever come across. The explainations either skip a lot of steps, or are so poorly worded, or both that I've given up trying to understand this book. Often, examples are not given for difficult topics. And the examples that are given are always very simple ones that help us very little in understanding the concepts. I am not exaggerating when I say this is the worst text book I have ever used. I do sincerely mean this.