Customer Reviews

The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (Penguin Reference Books)

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

 

 

This book is useful for anyone doing maths at college. It summarizes just about everything and is good as a quick reference to refresh your memory on something. (It is also fun just to page through, and look at all the wierd things that mathematicians have come up with). Another advantage is that if you are studying a section in maths that you are finding a little confusing or hard to grasp, the entry in this dictionary will give the important points. But don't expect too much detail, which I think is the main drawback of the book.

Anybody who regularly does math on a more-or-less advanced level will delight in this book; it is exhaustive but managable (the size of a common pocket novel, really) and quite concise. Buyers should realize, of course, that books like these are not meant to learn you calculus or whatever; instead, it is more of a helpful hand when you need it. Now, what was that formula for partial integration, again...?

As a student studying mathematics, I find it very useul! Packed with 3200 terms and 200 illustrations, It's a great quick reference guide. I found things in this guide that I couldn't find in any other book or guide. Another thing about this reference guide is the lack of poor illustrations and examples. Some things this guide helped me with is PARABOLAS, ELLIPSES, HYPERBOLAS, GAMMA FUNTION, ZETA FUNCTION, FEIGENBAUM NUMBER, THE GREEK ALPHABET, and much more. I thank David Nelson and Penguin Books for such excellent work.

The content of this book seems to be good, but my problem is that the kindle version has no table of contents, no index and no search function. It is therefore impossible to quickly find the section that you want or the topic you want - you have to page through the entire book until something useful appears. This is a fatal flaw for a reference book.

Wonderful having this on kindle. I had the paperback as well. Very useful for school math teachers, and students of Mathematics.

This is a concise (sometimes too concise) dictionary of mathematics, probably most useful to a student who needs a quick reference when a text or other source misses a step.

The book is somewhat erratic, at times over explaining or oversimplifying and at other times leaving out too much. There are also some notable omissions. For example, I was a little surprised that Dirac Delta Function is not in the book at all. The book covers some areas but leaves out obviously related ones. So some important figures in the history of mathematics are included, others aren't (though arguably just as important).

Perhaps this is to be expected. As I said it is a very concise reference.

One last note: I have found Wikipedia to be an excellent reference on subjects like those covered in this dictionary. I prefer holding the book in my hand and especially being able to browse through the book. But if you don't approach things with that browsing frame of mind, Wikipedia or something comparable will serve you just as well.

Simply put this is the best math dictionary out there for the high school level and for most college students. Maybe there are some more appropriate ones for upper level college math/science students. I have found the descriptions and links in the text very clear and appropriate for most students. I greatly prefer this one over the Oxford math dictionary.

I highly recommend it for high school math students (and make sure you keep it until you are done with college). When more detail is needed beyond this text there's always google.

As a student studying mathematics, I find it very useul! Packed with 3200 terms and 200 illustrations, It's a great quick reference guide. I found things in this guide that I couldn't find in any other book or guide. Another thing about this reference guide is the lack of poor illustrations and examples. Some things this guide helped me with is PARABOLAS, ELLIPSES, HYPERBOLAS, GAMMA FUNTION, ZETA FUNCTION, FEIGENBAUM NUMBER, THE GREEK ALPHABET, and much more. I thank Penguin Books for such excellent work.