Home :: Books :: Professional & Technical  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical

Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Single Variable Calculus (with CD-ROM)

Single Variable Calculus (with CD-ROM)

List Price: $117.95
Your Price: $117.95
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 >>

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: DON'T BUY!
Review: Specifically, This book...

Contains many errors, which have been discovered by students.

Offers far too few examples for the student to learn from.

Generally, students who use this book need to consult other books to learn the material.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: For what its worth, this is a good Calculus textbook
Review: This book covers the first twelve chapters of the full edition of Calculus by Stewart. I would actually recommend buying that book instead of this one if you are planning on taking up to Calc. 3 because they are similar in price but the full version includes Calc 1, 2, and 3 material.

Anyway, I used this text for both Calculus 1 and 2 in college. The first six chapters cover the course material for Calculus 1: Introductory Analytical Geometry, Limits, Derivatives, Applications of Derivatives, Integrals, and Applications of Intergrals. Chapters 7-12 covers course material normal for Calculus 2: Inverse functions/Derivatives and integrals of exponential and logarithmic functions, Techniques of Integrations, Applications of Integration to Physics/Engineering, Differiential Equations (which we didn't cover), Parametric Equations/Polar Coordinates, and Series. For some reason chapter seven includes different verisons of certain sections but they are basically the same anyway.

Unlike other reviewers, I think that this book was very helpful. It is possible to learn the material if you put a lot of effort into it, which you need to do if you really want to learn Calculus.

I can see why reviewers would find this book difficult to use though. Truthfully, I found the Calc 1 material much more difficult than the Calc 2 material, probably because more of the calc 1 material is based on theory. The section about graphing fuctions using derivatives is especially difficult. It is extremely difficult to take the derivatives of some of the functions the book gives you, let alone find the critical points, etc. Also, some of the maximinization problems are virtually impossible to solve and a number of the related rate problems are very tricky. Finally, I think that I can truthfully say that I rarely solved integrals correctly by the long way (using summations).

Some people think that Calc 2 is the hardest math subject in the world, but I found the calc 2 material much easier than the calc 1 material. The calc 2 chapters deal more with just solving problems particularly limits, integrals, and series, and the "proofs" for equations are just given on the side or in the appendex. You should already know the basics, so there is nothing really tricky here (except maybe integration by partial fractions) and if you put the effort into working problems, you will probably do ok. Calc 2 is all about 1) Learning how to solve problems by recognizing trends and 2) Commiting some formulas and equalities to memory in order to solve problems and learn about applications of math. As far as I can see, Stewart's problems are as good as any to learn Calc 2.

If you plan on studying Calculus in college, I would suggest first buying the book "Calculus the Easy Way" to look over first. It is pretty good; it covers all Calc 1 material and a good chunk of Calc 2 material. I would also suggest buying the solutions manuel to Stewart's text because it is helpful to see how the problems are worked out. My advice is to just put a lot of time into Calculus (no matter what book you use) and you should do ok. Its just math.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not a really good book
Review: This is my course book as I have no choice but buy it. But it is not a really good book on calculus... I felt that the author may had put a lot of effort on the book, but I get confused by the author's way of explaining things. I spent a lot of time rereading to exactly caught on what the author is talking about.
It does give a lot of exercise problems though and answers on the back. If you want explained solutions to the problems there is a solutions manual that you have to buy seperately. BUT I suggest you just ask your classmates to help you out and not buy the solution manual.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Sparse and unclear.
Review: This is one of the most user-unfriendly textbooks I have encountered. Stewart often presents complex concepts very quickly, with only the simplest of worked examples. This often makes the end-of-section problems bewildering, as the reader has not seen how to approach a given type of problem. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a textbook presenting some problems that require "outside the box" thinking and extension of chapter material, but I think it's a sign of shoddy writing when one's given such little guidance on how to do even simple problems. The book is serviceable for Calc I and very early Calc II (chapters 1-7), since Calc I material isn't nearly as difficult as Calc II. But the later chapters really suffer from Stewart's spartan presentation. Especially badly done are the sections on centers of mass, polar coordinates (especially the area between two polar curves), Taylor's Inequality, and the multiplication/division of power series. I was lucky to have a good professor who cleared up much of the material in lecture, but autodidacts are out of luck. I give this book two stars only because it's written in complete, grammatical sentences, and it does not contain glaring errors.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: GET A GOOD TEACHER!
Review: this text is hard to understand. A lot of the stuff is unclear. Make sure to get a good professor to explain the book! The book doesn't hold up its own end of the deal.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Went okay...Delivered on time!
Review: this was not the right book....when i entered this in only this one came up and i was not told otherwise...but i did recieve the book promptly.


<< 1 2 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates