Mathematical Applications for the Management Life and Social Sciences

Rating:
Summary: A useful, but flawed book.
Review: The title of this mathematics textbook indicates its intended audience: "Management, Life and Social Sciences". If this is indeed its goal, then the book suffers from a serious flaw, namely, the authors have forgotten that individuals studying "Management, Life and Social Sciences" come from a wide variety of backgrounds -- backgrounds which may or may not have included solid grounding in principles of higher mathematics. Persons, like myself, who come into graduate level business studies from another discipline, have not had the benefit of the mathematics foundations which, say, an engineering student might have had.

As such, the text needed "more words between the equations"! More explanation of the examples would have been extraordinarily helpful. Furthermore, while the book is supposedly keyed to the TI-83 graphing calculator, in order to actually exploit this resource, an additional volume (currently unavailable) is necessary. This is, in the eyes of this student...extremely unhelpful.

A previous reviewer noted the use of relevant word problems -- and I agree that this has been useful. What would have been more useful, however, would have been more actual instruction.

Rating:
Summary: A useful, but flawed book.
Review: The title of this mathematics textbook indicates its intended audience: "Management, Life and Social Sciences". If this is indeed its goal, then the book suffers from a serious flaw, namely, the authors have forgotten that individuals studying "Management, Life and Social Sciences" come from a wide variety of backgrounds -- backgrounds which may or may not have included solid grounding in principles of higher mathematics. Persons, like myself, who come into graduate level business studies from another discipline, have not had the benefit of the mathematics foundations which, say, an engineering student might have had.

As such, the text needed "more words between the equations"! More explanation of the examples would have been extraordinarily helpful. Furthermore, while the book is supposedly keyed to the TI-83 graphing calculator, in order to actually exploit this resource, an additional volume (currently unavailable) is necessary. This is, in the eyes of this student...extremely unhelpful.

A previous reviewer noted the use of relevant word problems -- and I agree that this has been useful. What would have been more useful, however, would have been more actual instruction.

Rating:
Summary: Great real-life approach to calculus
Review: This is probably the best basic calculus book I've ever used in a class. Unlike some books, this one gives real-life examples of how calculus is used to give you a better understanding of why you are studying it and what you can potentially do with it. It is definitely intended for a business major and geared in that direction. Great book!