A Very Applied First Course in Partial Differential Equations

Rating:
Summary: Avoid if possible
Review: This book is riddled with mistakes from incorrect derivations to incorrect tables in the appendix. Our class has our own lengthy errata webpage. As for the meat of the book, the derivations are not really fleshed out, and there are very few examples to go by. Except for one chapter devoted to applied problems, I lack to see how this book is called "very applied".

Rating:
Summary: applied maths PhD student / GSA
Review: This book is very readable and one of the best balances of theroy / applications I have ever seen. The autor not only devlopes all of the classica problems (heat, wave etc.,) and the necessary matehamtical tools ( seperation, Foruier series / transforms, & even 1st order characteristcs) better than most. But, he also incudes some really neat real world probelms (as projects) for example when covering Shcrodinger, on page 385, he considers the problem of transporting some plutonium on a cargo ship and devlopes a PDE to intepret what is the minum "critical size" of the box so that it is safe. So refreshing to see some real world probelms :)

I would strongly recomend teaching from this book, and would consider it a modern age version of some of the older books that truly balance theory & applications ( such as Sneddon's "Fourier transfroms" ).