Single Variable CALCULUS Early Transcendentals (Instructor's Edition) [Hardcover]

James Stewart (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 892 pages
• Publisher: Thomson Brooks/Cole; 6th edition (2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 049538559X
• ISBN-13: 978-0495385592
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #672,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a good book for beginners!, November 7, 2007

By 

Travis Hoff "thegws" (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Single Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Hardcover)

I'm not impressed with this book as a learning guide. As others have said, you can't learn calculus on your own with this book and I can assure you they are correct with that claim. You'll definitely need a person with a thorough knowledge of calculus to answer every problem you encounter and trust me, you're going to encounter A LOT with this book! The example problems do very little with helping to solve the assignment problems. In fact, the example problems are as good as useless to me because the author doesn't EXPLAIN how they're solved. He just solves them and you have to figure out how he's doing it! It's so frustrating. As a student, there's nothing more discouraging than not being able to understand how to work your way through a problem and that's where this author fails. Rather than building your confidence and starting easy and gradually making the problems more difficult, you're just thrown into the meat grinder of calculus and expected to spend X amount of time deciphering gibberish formulas and trying to piece them into place in hopes that you've correctly applied it to the assignment problem. Every single problem I've worked through I've had to look in the answer section only to find out my answer as wrong and re-work the problem again and again to solve it. If your school uses this book (ie: you're forced into using this book), then I HIGHLY recommend you get the solutions manual and any other text such as a 'Dummies' book to accompany this one because it's going to be hard to learn calculus with this book alone.

Bottom line: I don't recommend this book. If you're not required to buy it, then don't!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too few examples, December 3, 2008

By 

Math student - See all my reviews

This review is from: Single Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Hardcover)

Many of the practice exercises are not even remotely covered by one of the examples in the chapter. While this can be an interesting challenge, it more often than not causes frustration and impedes learning the material. This textbook isn't a suitable substitute for even an awful teacher.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars SORRY but this object with paper is HORRIBLE "I CAN'T CALL IT A TEXTBOOK", October 19, 2007

By 

R. Tang - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Single Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Hardcover)

I'm a freshman and this book is used for my Calculus class and it is probably the worst thing to "learn" calculus from. The examples in this book are in no way supportive of the problems. The problems at the end of each chapter are pretty difficult and the examples do not help. There is little explanation as to how to solve the problems and does not help build a solid foundation of fundamental ideas. The book is horrible in theory and application. I really want to write a letter to Stewart telling him how bad of a book it really is. Please do not try to purchase this book. It is not sufficient at all to learn calculus from.