Study Guide for Marsden and Tromba's Vector Calculus

Rating:
Summary: More solutions required.
Review: From the awful text written by Marsden and Tromba, the answer book shows some promise. However, more solutions are required to make it of any real value. Sallas, Hille, and Etgen's Calculus of one and several variables, is one such title that works in the students favour. In the solution manual, every odd numbered question is solved. Furthermore, the ones that are not solved are some form of that ones that are. This makes it a great companion for a student. With vector calculus, however, there seems to be no emphasis on helping the student. Usually, the easy questions are solved and sometimes they are done in obscure ways. If one is absolutely lost, this book may be useful. Otherwise a good study group could probably come up with better solutions.

One last point; the study hints are somewhat condescending. There seems to be the assumption that the student has no intelligence. They point out the obvious and clearly there has been no real effort spent in preparing them.