Rating: 
Summary: Worst Calculus book!!!
Review: This is the most horrid book I have ever seen on the subject of Caclulus. Having taught from this book this semester, I can say it has over-simple examples, but NEVER EVER seems to give examples of how to work problems beyond the first one or two(and sometimes not even that). Really, if you use this book, you are doing your students a considerable disservice, and should be fired.
Rating:
Summary: This book is terrible!!!
Review: This is the worst math book I've ever used, the explanations are cryptic, the proofs are incomplete and naive, the examples are dumb and unexplaining. If you want to understand anything about vector calculus, don't even touch this book.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written introduction to vector calculus
Review: This was the required textbook for my calculus 3 course, and I found it very difficult to use. The example problems are neither useful nor enlightening; they are usually the simplest, most intuitive cases of the type of problem at hand and do not help students who are seeing this material for the first time learn how to think about more complex problems and concepts. There are errors in the answer key. The illustrations and graphs are sparse and done entirely in orange, black, and grey (in contrast to the Stewart text, with rich, useful graphics that really help students learn to visualize the material). The text is poorly written and often difficult to understand, not in terms of mathematical concepts but simply in terms of figuring out what the author is trying to communicate. Many of the exercises are poorly worded, confusing, and far too many require stupid "tricks" to solve - i.e., all of the "calculus" content is contained in a simple one-line setup of the problem, but solving the problem requires another page and a half of algebraic gymnastics involving unintuitive substitutions and so on.
There are two separate calculus 3 courses at my university. The other course used the Stewart text this semester, and their average exam scores were about twenty points higher than ours. If you must use this book, try to get a copy of Stewart; it helped me get through several problems and concepts that I would never have understood using only this book. Every mathematician and math major I have shown this book to has agreed with me that it is very poorly written, especially for an introductory text.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: What can one say about such a terrible book. The lack of any real math, questions with very little purpose, and an absence of character just make this book not worth looking. Unless the only motive is to look at final formulas without any explanation, derivation, or discussed significance then this book serves its purpose. Otherwise it is absolutely useless. It's cruel to give this book to students. What bothers me more is the lack of rigour that is exercised. Badly written, incomplete, or non-existant proofs add to the bitter taste of this volume. In short, do not buy this book. Find something better.
Rating: 
Summary: Better proofs and clearer explanations are needed
Review: When I was a second-year math student, I found that "Vector Calculus" needed to provide students with clearer and more rigorous explanations and proofs of theorems. Too many statements were expected to be belived on face value. Specifically, I found no intuitive justification for the Jacobian Matrix anywhere in the book, nor any hint of a proof or explanation of its origins. Students will take to this already-challenging subject more if theorems are rigorously proved. This way they feel they're being treated like mathematicians instead of idiots. Moreover, the subject of multivariate calculus would feel like mathematics instead of a course in vocabulary memorization.
Rating: 
Summary: Marsden's "Vector Calculus"
Review: When I was a university student back to the 80's, there are many vector calculus books I can read from the library. However, Marsden's book is the best book I ever read on this subject for students. It is very good for both college students and for self-study purpose. I couldn't resist to buy and keep one myself and it is still very useful to me today. It is the most complete book on the subject of VC extends from introductory to even higher than master level. Very clear, systematic, strict but inspiring. Then comes, later, books with the same title from Colley, Barr and Matthews etc. Colley's book is very good for student also but I still find Marsden's book the best. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good intro.
Review: While some of my peers deem "Vector Calculus" to be a fine integration of theory and practice, I'd have to COMPLETELY disagree. From a teaching stand point, it is one of the worst texts out there (at least for a first course). At my university, some of the instructors have tried to use it as the text for the second half of a four quarter calculus sequence. This attempt has met with terrible failure, in my opinion. Most of my students (math majors and engineering students) found the book difficult and perplexing with few examples that pertained to the material they were required to learn. Luckily, the professor for my course was very good at conveying the ideas present without alluding to the text; nevertheless, I spent countless hours in discussion helping my students understand material that most standard texts would have clearly elucidated for them. In fact, at numerous points, the text becomes so involved with its own pedagogy that it neglects to delinate between important, must-know theorems and simply interesting facts. In addition, only the very first exercises in a given section are useful for most students. A number of the later questions become interesting problems in some upper div. class, but have no bearing on the course at hand. Quite a few of them are not difficult but require "tricks" which often discourage the students by giving them the impression that they don't get the material simply because they couldn't come up with the solutions to these extraneous questions. I would strongly recommend Stewart's text (for those of you on the West Coast) and Salas and Hille's text (for those of you in the Southwest). Prehaps, Marsden's text would be o.k. for a more advanced course on vector calc. or as a go-between supplement for a more rigorous text.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good intro.
Review: While some of my peers deem "Vector Calculus" to be a fine integration of theory and practice, I'd have to COMPLETELY disagree. From a teaching stand point, it is one of the worst texts out there (at least for a first course). At my university, some of the instructors have tried to use it as the text for the second half of a four quarter calculus sequence. This attempt has met with terrible failure, in my opinion. Most of my students (math majors and engineering students) found the book difficult and perplexing with few examples that pertained to the material they were required to learn. Luckily, the professor for my course was very good at conveying the ideas present without alluding to the text; nevertheless, I spent countless hours in discussion helping my students understand material that most standard texts would have clearly elucidated for them. In fact, at numerous points, the text becomes so involved with its own pedagogy that it neglects to delinate between important, must-know theorems and simply interesting facts. In addition, only the very first exercises in a given section are useful for most students. A number of the later questions become interesting problems in some upper div. class, but have no bearing on the course at hand. Quite a few of them are not difficult but require "tricks" which often discourage the students by giving them the impression that they don't get the material simply because they couldn't come up with the solutions to these extraneous questions. I would strongly recommend Stewart's text (for those of you on the West Coast) and Salas and Hille's text (for those of you in the Southwest). Prehaps, Marsden's text would be o.k. for a more advanced course on vector calc. or as a go-between supplement for a more rigorous text.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good intro.
Review: While some of my peers deem "Vector Calculus" to be a fine integration of theory and practice, I'd have to COMPLETELY disagree. From a teaching stand point, it is one of the worst texts out there (at least for a first course). At my university, some of the instructors have tried to use it as the text for the second half of a four quarter calculus sequence. This attempt has met with terrible failure, in my opinion. Most of my students (math majors and engineering students) found the book difficult and perplexing with few examples that pertained to the material they were required to learn. Luckily, the professor for my course was very good at conveying the ideas present without alluding to the text; nevertheless, I spent countless hours in discussion helping my students understand material that most standard texts would have clearly elucidated for them. In fact, at numerous points, the text becomes so involved with its own pedagogy that it neglects to delinate between important, must-know theorems and simply interesting facts. In addition, only the very first exercises in a given section are useful for most students. A number of the later questions become interesting problems in some upper div. class, but have no bearing on the course at hand. Quite a few of them are not difficult but require "tricks" which often discourage the students by giving them the impression that they don't get the material simply because they couldn't come up with the solutions to these extraneous questions. I would strongly recommend Stewart's text (for those of you on the West Coast) and Salas and Hille's text (for those of you in the Southwest). Prehaps, Marsden's text would be o.k. for a more advanced course on vector calc. or as a go-between supplement for a more rigorous text.
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