Maths: A Student's Survival Guide: A Self-Help Workbook for Science and Engineering Students [Paperback]

Jenny Olive (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521575869 | ISBN-13: 978-0521575867 | Publication Date: September 28, 1998

This friendly and gentle self-help workbook covers mathematics essential for first-year undergraduate scientists and engineers. Mathematics underlies all science and engineering degrees. If your mathematics is not strong, you may have a problem. This book is the solution. Jenny Olive uses her wide experience of teaching and helping students to give you a clear and confident understanding of the core mathematics you need to start a science and engineering degree. Each topic is introduced very gently, starting with simple examples that really bring out the basics, then moving on to more challenging problems. The author takes time to give tricks of the trade and shortcuts, but is also careful to show you common errors and how to anticipate and avoid them. There are over 800 questions for you to do with full and detailed solutions given so that if you get stuck you can work through and see exactly where you have gone wrong. Topics covered include trigonometry and hyperbolic functions, sequences and series (with detailed help on binomial series), differentiation and integration, and complex numbers. This book is a fun and easy way to brush up your maths - either before you start on your university or college course, or while you are getting to grips with it. It's never too late!

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Jenny Olive's Maths: A Student's Survival Guide is a friendly book written in an engaging style ... It also contains very full, worked solutions to the exercises, which will greatly aid self-study. The introduction contains wise guidance on how to study and understand mathematics and the author's experience as a teacher comes out through her warnings of pitfalls and common errors ... it will be valued particularly by those who need to make up a deficiency in a specific topic or to remove the rust from their mathematics ... working through a few sections from Olive may be the prescription to cure the problem in many cases.' Nigel Steele, The Times Higher Education Supplement

' ... designed as a self-study guide, and allows students to make as much use of sections of the book as they need ... An important feature is that for every concept, the book returns to basics, giving clear and entertaining explanations of the background to maths ... this book is a fine example of its kind and I shall certainly use it with my students certainly use it with my students in the coming year.' Geoff Auty, School Science Review

' ... excellent value, and certainly worth recommending to the strugglers in your maths class or tutorial group.' Andrew King, The Observatory

Book Description

This friendly and gentle self-help workbook covers mathematics essential for first-year undergraduate scientists and engineers. Each topic is introduced very gently, starting with simple examples that really bring out the basics, then moving on to more challenging problems. Includes over 800 questions with detailed solutions.

Product Details

• Paperback: 578 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (September 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521575869
• ISBN-13: 978-0521575867
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books for self study, December 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Maths: A Student's Survival Guide: A Self-Help Workbook for Science and Engineering Students (Paperback)

As a finance professional, I was becoming overwhelmed with the growing complexity of financial products. Over time, my patch work math education was beginning to fray resulting in growing frustration and loss of confidence.

Jenny Olive's book is very helpful for people entering into a self study math program to bring together their fragmented college level math education and build mathematical understanding. If you were like me, the fast pace of college level courses forced you to cut corners and rush through material without the deep understanding that builds confidence. The book begins with Algebra and moves on to Trig and Calculus. The explanations are extremely lucid and the exercises are put together intelligently to move you toward greater complexity. And yes, there is no substitute for working out the problems as any good mathematician will tell you. I disagree with a previous reviewer on this score. Although, I felt (somewhat arrogantly) that I did not need to review Algebra, I found myself red faced and stuck in some of the more advanced problems. Fortunately the clear explanation and repeated problem solving gave me the insights that I was lacking. I found it helpful to work with a graphing calculator to help visualize some of the mathematics. It's also a great way to learn a graphing calculator!

I understand that Ms. Olive is adding two new chapters to her next edition, which she has kindly made available on her website for persons who own the current version. It would be nice if she would make it available in a downloadable PDF version.

I am hoping that the author will choose to follow this up with similar books on Probability and Linear Algebra. Her recommendations for further reading would also be very helpful. Great math books (and math teachers)are worth their weight in gold. Buy this book for your math library. You won't regret it.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great review, June 5, 1999

By 

Chris Clark (Nanning, China) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Maths: A Student's Survival Guide: A Self-Help Workbook for Science and Engineering Students (Paperback)

I didn't take any Math senior year, and I took 2 years off after high school, and now I'm going to be a Computer Science major, so I really needed this book! I bought it a week ago and I'm halfway done, so now I won't have to take precalculus over again. The previous reviewer is right, it could include more, but if I have time, I'll just buy a Schwab outline to cover vectors and so on. One thing about this book is that it has few exercises, which is fine, because what person self-studying is actually going to do 30 exercises . . . I would, but the few exercises gets me moving through the material faster.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars self help book for alg/trig/log/calc I. (applied science), October 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Maths: A Student's Survival Guide: A Self-Help Workbook for Science and Engineering Students (Paperback)

This book is written for someone who has been exposed to the subject but did not understand it, or has not had a math class in a while. Ms. Olive has taken extra effort to help the students avoid the pitfalls often encountered in these math topics. This attitude is reflected throughout the book. I felt that with the numerous problems solved at the back of the book (in detail), the price of this book,was a frugal investment. With vectors and additional physical science problems added to this book, I would give it 5 stars.