Rating: 
Summary: An Interesting Approach
Review: Short story:Overall a rather good book with a unique approach that focuses on qualitative techniques; it serves as a book which develops in the reader an understanding of differential equations rather than as a manual for simply solving them. It has, however, a few shortcomings, such as overemphasis on numerical methods and unchallenging problems. Long Story: This book was used in my first course in differential equations at Middlebury College, where I am a physics and math double major. Advantages: *A qualitative approach is employed to the solution but more importantly the understanding of differential equations. This approach forces the reader/student to use his/her inherent intelligence and creativity, rather than simply memorizing some formulas and techniques and mindlessly plugging and chugging. *Applications are clearly related to the material rather than being the product of a trite, inconsequential link between the underlying mathematics and a real-world situation (all too often that is the case with math books). *The CD Rom, when used appropriately, is useful in "bringing to life" the material and is a rather fun visual aide. *Topics are usually well-explained (though in some cases the explanations seem rather murky and for that reason I would not recommend this for self-study). Divadvantages: *Too much emphasis on numerical methods. With computers around today to solve such problems in such ways, it would be better to keep numerical solutions to a minimum. *Too strong a focus on biological/ecological problems and offered too few applications to areas like physics. *Analytical methods could have been addressed a bit more thoroughly, as well as exemplified more frequently in the text. In place of solved problems, it seems, there were instead lines of computer code. *The CD-Rom is pretty useless except as a fun toy; if you want something that will actually do the math for you, especially in the case of numerical problems, I recommend setting up an Excel document that can do Euler's method etc. *The problems tended to be unchallenging.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible paedagogical dreck
Review: This book is a DE text for students who've had the misfortune to have been subjected to "reformed calculus"--- i.e., calculus without algebra. There is very little substance here, only high-school level chit-chat and "qualitative analysis" of nearly trivial problems. The writing style is insulting to anyone other than brain-dead pedagogs.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible paedagogical dreck
Review: This book is a DE text for students who've had the misfortune to have been subjected to "reformed calculus"--- i.e., calculus without algebra. There is very little substance here, only high-school level chit-chat and "qualitative analysis" of nearly trivial problems. The writing style is insulting to anyone other than brain-dead pedagogs.
Rating: 
Summary: accessible, well-written intro to DiffEq
Review: This book was the required text for an intro course I took on DiffEq. Great book, easy to read, very complete, with challenging problems. A fantastic resource for anyone who needs to know DiffEq.
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