Differential Equations

Good diff eq book. A bit of a different approach than usual textbooks on the subject, focuses a lot more on examples than just presenting diff eq theory. Furthermore you can get a good hardcover copy for cheap, good purchase overall

I used this text to teach differential equations to advanced high school seniors and it worked extremely well. After considering several other texts, I was sold on this book for three reasons: 1. Rather than older-style differential equations books that focus on analytic methods, this book has a consistent approach of using a combination of analytic, qualitative, and numerical methods. As an industrial mathematician, most differential equations that I worked with could not be solved analytically and thus numerical and qualitative techniques became key tools. 2. The friendly expository style of the authors motivates the material and is easier for students to understand than more formal textbooks. New material is always introduced by concrete examples before getting into theory. 3. The book is written from a dynamical systems point of view and the authors tap into many interesting results from the past 40-50 years, e.g., the Lorenz equations, modeling epidemics, adaptive shock absorbers, etc. Perhaps my most pleasant surprise teaching the course was how much the students liked and learned from DETools, the differential equation software that comes with the textbook. We regularly used DETools in class (there's essentially no learning curve) and its use energized the students and made much more clear to them the nature of solutions. I also found the exploratory projects at the end of each chapter very valuable. My students liked the challenge of these more general and open-ended problems, and the projects solidified their understanding. As far as the nuts and bolts of teaching the course, I typically covered one section per day, and we did most of the sections in Chapters 1-6. Regrettably we didn't get to the last two chapters of the book, but they are quite good. Chapter 7 gets into the nitty gritty of numerical methods (e.g., effects of finite arithmetic) and Chapter 8 is a nice introduction to discrete dynamical methods. (A one-semester course in differential equations can only cover so much, so the text leaves to a later course many special techniques for analytically solving ODEs and it does not cover boundary value problems or the Fourier method.) In summary, I am in very much in agreement with August 7, 2013 review by "G Cantor" that "it would be difficult to find a better introductory text for ordinary differential equations." This text is a great intro that makes the subject come alive and does an excellent job preparing students to work with differential equations both in later college colleges and in the real world.

As a college student, I really didn't want to spend the money on a new textbook, and for the price this is amazing! The binding is worn, and there's a few pages torn, but nothing too bad. No tears larger than an inch or two. The access code even came with it!

This was the required book for my calculus 4 class which was a combination of linear algebra and differential equations. My professor did not actually use the book all that much so I honestly did not use it as much as I used other books in other classes. This is definitely a different kind of textbook. It does not really jump right into the theory and then problem sets like most books do. Instead, it almost reads like a novel, then starts getting into theory and examples, then has the problem sets after that. I am not exactly sure how I would have felt about that style had I needed to use the book more. In the differential equations portion of the class my professor basically taught from his own notes and made up his own problem sets, so this was more ancillary to the class. I remember thinking that it was kind of an odd way to set up a math book when I did read it until I discovered I could follow along with what my teacher was saying without having to consult the book. If you are in a class and your teacher does rely on the book heavily you may need to get some kind of study guide to go along with this, depending on how well you can understand how it presents the material.

I used this textbook for a Differential Equations college course. The book itself is relatively easy to read\entertaining at times, but does a poor job of presenting the needed formulas. If you are required to purchase this book for a class, I highly recommend investing in something which simply gives you the formulas.

Arrived in great condition, cover looked really nice, pages were clean with very few notes (all in pencil), overall very happy with my purchase! Wish my professor was this reliable!

Quite possibly the most useless math textbook I have ever used. It aims for a conversational style but does so poorly and is very difficult to follow. It is impossible to use as a reference because the useful parts of the book are obfuscated by the authors' style complete lack of organization. The book might be usable in the hands of a talented professor but, without that, will make the task of learning differential equations much more difficult than necessary. Textbooks like this are the reason so many students grow up to hate math.

Great book and service. I order this book instead of from my universities book store, and saved more than half. Boy, do those book stores rip students off..... Students do some research on the internet before buying overpriced books from campus bookstores you'll save a lot of money.