2007-02-03 Poorly presented and poor explanations

I was recommended by my lecturers to buy this book for my maths module in the first year of my physics degree. I found that the book is not intuitive, has an ugly appearence (which doesnt motivate the reader to work at the subject) and, most importantly, explains the methods in question very poorly. As an example, I spent three hours trying to figure out how the book had worked through an integration question, only to find later that the problem had arisen simply because the book had skipped an important step, that wasn't at all obvious. This was the day before an exam to really rub salt in the wound.

I found that the book makes a song and dance of obvious ideas, and simply skims over the more complicated steps in new ideas.

All in all, I have hardly ever been able to make good use of this book. Bear in mind, however, that mine is a physics degree, not a maths or engineering degree, but I suspect the problems would be no different in those degrees also.