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Summary: love this book
Review: I find the explanations clear, the illustrations helpful, and the approach excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive textbook.
Review: I have currently used it in order to refresh my basic calculus. I realize that there are many books of this type available and it is impossible to create a reliable comparison, however Stewart's Calculus is widely used in Colleges as well.
Based on my experience, this is not a bad example of a math textbook. What I want to emphasize - learning was quite pleasant by exploring and working through plethora of examples and projects. Physics applications use interchangeably Engineering Units System (pounds, foot, miles) and MKS System (Newton, meter, Joule) - and the first should be avoided. After all, we live in the XXI century.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic Math Text
Review: I say "Classic" because, like most math textbooks, this one is difficult to understand. Perhaps this is not the author's fault. After all, writing a calculus text is no small feat. The authors of these books have to try to include every possible concept for fear that a math department or instructor will reject the book because it omits something or other. This means that you will get a little bit of everything, with a paltry few examples for each section. If you have a sadistic professor (aren't they all?), you may feel lost in trying to grasp calculus concepts from this book alone. Math texts are full of assumptions, often skipping steps along the way in the examples. Packed with lots of "Thus and therefores," this book will be a mystery to all but the few geeks who were members of the math or Star Trek club in high school. Definitely buy the solutions manual, as well as REA's "Problem Solver," "Schaum's Outlines," and "3000 Solved Problems." Good luck; you're going to need it.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Math Text
Review: I say "Classic" because, like most math textbooks, this one is difficult to understand. Perhaps this is not the author's fault. After all, writing a calculus text is no small feat. The authors of these books have to try to include every possible concept for fear that a math department or instructor will reject the book because it omits something or other. This means that you will get a little bit of everything, with a paltry few examples for each section. If you have a sadistic professor (aren't they all?), you may feel lost in trying to grasp calculus concepts from this book alone. Math texts are full of assumptions, often skipping steps along the way in the examples. Packed with lots of "Thus and therefores," this book will be a mystery to all but the few geeks who were members of the math or Star Trek club in high school. Definitely buy the solutions manual, as well as REA's "Problem Solver," "Schaum's Outlines," and "3000 Solved Problems." Good luck; you're going to need it.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is awful
Review: I think the author of this book tries his hardest to make the problems as confusing as possible. Especially the even ones. There are many times when an even numbered problem is extremely difficult, but there is no similar example out of any of the explained odd problems in the text. The only thing I would say is good about this book is possibly one or two of the earliest sections and the cd, which isn't even all that good as far as text book cds go. I guess the people who rated it well must have already had a pretty good handle on the concepts already, but for someone who has never had calc and who is not the best at math, this book just makes things more confusing. Your best bet would be to hope you have a very good teacher, and maybe to join a study group because the book definitely is no help.
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Summary: Great Book to Learn Calculus!
Review: I used this text for calculus I and II. The text teaches you calculus by the typical brute force method (evaluate these integrals or differentiate these functions) along with some application problems and calculator/CAS problems. It is organized well, has plenty of nice illustrations, and plenty of proofs - so it makes for a good reference book if you go on into advanced calculus.
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Summary: Mean Value Theorem is Poorly Presented
Review: I was asked to serve on the calculus adoption committee this spring. Over the holidays, I examined some of the texts submitted for our consideration. With each, I started with the presentation of the Mean Value Theorem because this theorem is fundamental to the understanding of Freshman calculus. I was disappointed at the poor presentation of this material in Stewart.
4.2 Mean Value Theorem, pages 234-239 p. 234 Stewart says that "to arrive at the Mean Value Theorem we first need" Rolle's Theorem. This is not true. There are many ways to prove the Mean Value Theorem. I don't like a text that tells my students there is only one way to prove a certain result. p. 235 The margin comment seems to imply that a student can trust the graph shown by a graphing calculator. The section gives no example to demonstrate possible pitfalls of graphing technology. p. 235 Stewart says that Joseph-Louis Lagrange was French. This is not true. He was born in Italy and baptized in the name of Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia. His great-grandfather on his father's side was French and Lagrange leaned toward his French ancestry. A college text should be more careful when discussing historical facts. p. 235 The text gives students no idea about the meaning of the word "mean" in the Mean Value Theorem. p. 235 I find the use of "we" and "let's" throughout the text to be old fashioned and presumptuous. When the author says to a student "we can see" (last paragraph) he is assuming that he and his reader have similar backgrounds. Overall, the writing style is uninviting. p. 236 Again, in the proof of the Mean Value Theorem, the author claims that "First we must verify that h satisfies the three hypotheses of Rolle's Theorem." As a mathematician, this offends me. p. 237 I consider the Mean Value Theorem to be the most important theorem in Freshman calculus. The author's statement about the "main significance of the Mean Value Theorem" gives students no idea about the fundamental importance of the theorem. p. 237 The numbering system in the book would be awkward to use in class. Each section begins anew with Figure 1 and Theorem 1 and Equation 1. The standard convention is mathematics texts is to number Figures and Theorems by chapter, as in Figure 4.1. p. 238 The exercise set is short --- only 34 exercises. Of these, there are only 3 exercises dealing with trigonometric functions (Exercises 3, 18, and 29.) p. 239 Exercise 9 I don't like the wording in part (c) of this exercise. As a student, how am I to verify to my instructor that I have "noticed that the tangent line is parallel to the secant line?" I would prefer something more challenging, such as "show that the tangent line is parallel to the secant line." p. 239 Exercise 22 Stewart refers to a function having "roots." I checked this in the James and James Mathematics Dictionary and Stewart's use of the word is incorrect. Equations have roots, graphs have intercepts, and functions have zeros. p. 239 I have heard that Stewart has challenging exercises. Yet, I see that two of the more challenging exercises in this set are accompanied by "Hints" that give the solution away. p. 239 Exercise 33 This exercise is nonsense. On page 118 the author defines "position function" to refer to straight line motion. Yet, it is not given that runners are traveling in a straight line. Don't runners commonly run around an oval track? In such a case, what does the author mean by the term "velocity?" Does he really mean "speed?" The author makes a point of saying the runners "start at the same time." The point of the using the Mean Value Theorem is that the runners travel the same distance during the same interval of time.
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Summary: You can see my previous reviews of this low quality textbook
Review: I wrote many reviews about this author and his bad calculus textbooks. 1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd edition...so what? Despite having a CD-ROM, the book still is the same which is lack of complete and explicit examples, not user friendly, skips steps in the problems presented as examples, lack of color, a poorly written student solutions manual and very condenscending in its language to the reader.
This basically is a very bad textbook. There are much better calculus textbooks from other fine authors and publishers
Again take it from a student who is now in a professional school. Yes, I'm a very intelligent student in a competitive health field program and I'm not lying. I will say this as a student to all math teachers who might have heard this is a good calculus textbook. Don't let those testimonials about "how good this book is" fool you. This is truely not a good calculus book and it frustrates students more then ever. To all math teachers, if you want the student to lose respect for you as a professional math teacher or professor, then go ahead and buy this book for the students to learn from. If you want your students to respect you as a good math teacher or professor, I suggest you stay clear away from this book and find other calculus textbooks from other publishers and authors to teach your students from.
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Summary: Stewart provides a firm ground for calc beginners
Review: In the world of introductory physics, there is clearly a division: those who hate Stewart, and those who love Stewart. I, frankly, am neither: but I realize that Stewart's many strong points outweigh the weak points. Beginners often will find pure theory and proofs alien to their minds, as they are just trying to grasp how to apply what they are learning --- like how they may go about obtaining derivatives and plotting periodic functions. Stewart handles this well: while providing a good theoretical background (he states theorems and proves most of them quite clearly and succintly) he does not inundate the wide-eyed innocent with epsilons and other frightening Greek characters. Stewart stresses some very important and difficult concepts to grasp --- like the many methods on integration involving 'guessing' substitution methods and others ways of integrating which involve understanding what the answer might be in advance by scanning the integral first, etc. Stewart also introduces some differential equations and has a wonderfully long section on series which stress their most useful applications -- the convergence and divergence of series and the Taylor and Maclaurin series representations of functions. Stewart's text is clear and easy for the student to work through either in a class setting or independently. I should know -- I taught myself Calc II (integration to series) using this book, and now I am doing quite well in advanced calc (integral transforms, partial differential equations, etc). Stewart sets the stage for success. This book can be easily used by students at any age who have had up to the level of trigonometry.
Rating:
Summary: Stewart provides a firm ground for calc beginners
Review: In the world of introductory physics, there is clearly a division: those who hate Stewart, and those who love Stewart. I, frankly, am neither: but I realize that Stewart's many strong points outweigh the weak points. Beginners often will find pure theory and proofs alien to their minds, as they are just trying to grasp how to apply what they are learning --- like how they may go about obtaining derivatives and plotting periodic functions. Stewart handles this well: while providing a good theoretical background (he states theorems and proves most of them quite clearly and succintly) he does not inundate the wide-eyed innocent with epsilons and other frightening Greek characters. Stewart stresses some very important and difficult concepts to grasp --- like the many methods on integration involving 'guessing' substitution methods and others ways of integrating which involve understanding what the answer might be in advance by scanning the integral first, etc. Stewart also introduces some differential equations and has a wonderfully long section on series which stress their most useful applications -- the convergence and divergence of series and the Taylor and Maclaurin series representations of functions. Stewart's text is clear and easy for the student to work through either in a class setting or independently. I should know -- I taught myself Calc II (integration to series) using this book, and now I am doing quite well in advanced calc (integral transforms, partial differential equations, etc). Stewart sets the stage for success. This book can be easily used by students at any age who have had up to the level of trigonometry.
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