Differential Equations with BVP
9/25/2007
Good book, and covers a well range. JustAsk is a feature they have for an extra cost. While I think it is better then the pearson prentice hall books and online content it still skips steps with eigen values and vectors.
Good book
1/1/2008
This book touches every subject and it does so focusing on the mathematical knowledge. This book's strong point is that it doesn't treat the reader as an idiot, as other DE books make a point of doing, but it also doesn't simply provide the method's and theorem's deductions. It's a good book that justifies it's place on any serious science and engineering student and professional.
More/better examples
2/8/2008
The examples in this book are both few and lacking. The text isn't too good at explaining procedures either. Easily the worst math text book I have used.
Fails at teaching
3/26/2008
Explanations are difficult to understand, and the example problems for each section are insufficient for demonstrating the topic. There are no solutions to the exercises in the back of the book, only answers. If you want to learn diff eq., I would recommend using Pauls Online Notes and your instructor's lectures. This book fails to teach students how to solve problems.
Not entirely useless
4/10/2008Ok, so I'm in the same boat as most of you here.
I hardly even opened this book when I first took a course in differential equations.
However, once I began taking higher level courses I found its introductory explanations of many forms of solutions (like Bessel Functions) to be useful. Although I don't believe it's worth using in a course in ordinary differential equations, it still makes an ok reference once you've mastered ODE's and periodically need refreshers on particular topics like Euler's equations excetera.
So my suggestion is if you're planning on taking a lot of math just bear with this book and master your prof's notes. If your professor gives nasty notes and you're not so great at math ... you might want to buy a cheap paperback backup book if you want to do well. People seem to enjoy Ordinary Differential Equations, I didn't buy it but a friend of mine did and it worked for him (of course he still needed help with some of the assignments).