Not bad, but better titles out there
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This book is fairly comprehensive and covers all the main areas of the first year maths sylabus (I'm studying Physics). However, I found the style of this book made it hard to read and understand, and at times the text was unclear. A much better book, im my opinion, is "Mathematical Methods for Science Students" by Stephenson, which is very concise and deals with most of the material in a logical and well thought out manner.
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Some people like it, others don't
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This book is a classic Jekyl and Hyde book for the student population - some like it, some don't. I personally do. It doesn't cover as much advanced material as you would like (I'm doing a mathematical physics degree at Imperial for reference), but it does occasionally throw you some useful technique that you haven't encountered before (courses can't cover everything you know), along with lots of practise questions. I'm not sure if this book would be useful in helping you during your course because it never goes into much explanatory detail: I think this is why some people hate it so much. I used the book as 'supplementary' reading in the holidays merely because I was interested. This, I guess, is what the book was made for and is where it excels - as a SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCE for those who are interested. Some people say the book is too incomprehensible. I've seen much worse, but you have to be comfortable with maths to enjoy this book because it's aimed at the emerging theorist or someone fluent in mathematics. Again, people find this book hard because they are expecting it to be something that it's not. Don't expect to learn a new topic from scratch from this book - it's not detailed enough for that, expect it to develop subjects that you've hade a vague aquaintance with before. In summary, if you love maths, buy this book. If you see maths as a chore, there are better books for your purpose.
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Confused? You will be after reading this...
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I'd just like to echo what others have said regarding the impenetrability of this book. I used it as a physics undergraduate and found it very confusing indeed. The information that you need might be in there, but it's very difficult to be sure. Not recommended.
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Horror
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In my opinion, this book does not deserve a single star. The author tries to prove that Newton's Second Law is wrong using exp(-1/t^2) function to describe the displacement of a car. It is stated in this book, that the car will move in spite of all the time derivatives are 0 at t=0. Perhaps it is not easy to turn blind eyes if a professor of mathematics seemingly has poor knowledge of mechanics but I find impossible to except that the basic of mathematical understanding is missing. Even the undergraduate student should know that this function does not exist at t=0 so it cannot have derivative at this point.
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Excellent, but can be challenging
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Yes, Boas can be a bit heavy going the first few weeks you use it but everything you need is in there. I'm at the end of my 2nd year at Oxford doing physics and haven't needed to use another maths book. It's wicked.
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