A Practical Guide to Pseudospectral Methods (Cambridge Monographs on Applied and Computational Mathematics)

Rating:
Summary: This is a guide, not an expository report
Review: This book is a wonderful guide to pseudo-spectral techniques which begins its discussion as an extension or more precisely as the limit of finite difference techniques. Unfortunately for anyone who would wish to learn these techniques I would have to recomend another book. However, for someone who already knows these techniques then this book is invaluable. It covers in a clear, mathematical way in which certain pitfalls and problems may be overcome. It does not, however, teach more of the advanced methods that must be used in more complex boundary value problems.

I think that a mathematician will find this book easy reading. I also think that an educated engineer will also have little difficulty following along. I do not recomend this book to anyone who has not taken a course in PDE's as background theory is always more important to application than indiscriminately learning a technique.