The Active Modeler: Mathematical Modeling With Microsoft Excel

Rating:
Summary: An ideal text for those modeling with Excell
Review: This text is a softcover, even though at this time Amazon still lists it as a thin hardcover. It is written on the same level as Giordano, Wier and Fox's Mathematical Modelling, but focuses directly on the use of Microsoft's Excell. I am one of the many annoyed with Microsoft, but since Excell is ubiquitious, it makes a reasonable choice for a course. The book is very visual showing, for example, how to use Excell to draw Feigenbaum diagrams to illustrate chaos, how to illustrating Newton's method (drawing the tangent lines...), drawing Bezier curves for smoothing... It points out many of Excell's useful features (some have found just learning how to add scrollbars useful).