Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems: Computing and Modeling, Workbook Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This book has several problems.
1. There are numerous typos in the text as well as in the solutions printed in the back of the book (and in the solutions manual). It can be very frustrating to puzzle over a problem for a long time only to find you were right and the book was wrong.
2. Several important techniques are only explained as short paragraphs in the exercise section (ie Euler Equation substitution, Reduction of Order, and others). You are left to try and figure out how to apply the vague instructions by looking at the solutions manual or asking someone else. I found this to be the biggest problem with the book.
3. The end of each example or concept is marked by a small red box in the margin of the page. These boxes are easy to miss so the distinction between example and theory, as well as between different aspects of the theory will become blurred unless you pay close attention to when the red boxes appear. Consequently results derived from theory and results derived from specific examples tend to blend together.
4. Often the authors add length to problems by providing the given values in non-SI units and the constants of nature in SI units. While this isn't a serious problem with the book, it would make the book needlessly annoying if you were using it for self study.
For the class that required this book I ended up checking out a different textbook on differential equations from the library to learn from. I only used this one for the questions we were assigned. If you have any choice in the matter I would recommend getting a different book.

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This practical book reflects the new technological emphasis that permeates differential equations, including the wide availability of scientific computing environments like Maple, Mathematica, and MATLAB; it does not concentrate on traditional manual methods but rather on new computer-based methods that lead to a wider range of more realistic applications.The book starts and ends with discussions of mathematical modeling of real-world phenomena, evident in figures, examples, problems, and applications throughout the book.For mathematicians and those in the field of computer science.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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