Maths: A Student's Survival Guide: A Self-Help Workbook for Science and Engineering Students
Cambridge University Press
Edition: 2, 9/18/2003
EAN 9780521017077, ISBN10: 0521017076
Paperback, 650 pages, 27.7 x 21.8 x 4.6 cm
Language: English
This friendly self-help workbook covers mathematics essential to first-year undergraduate scientists and engineers. In the second edition of this highly successful textbook the author has completely revised the existing text and added a totally new chapter on vectors. Mathematics underpins all science and engineering degrees, and this may cause problems for students whose understanding of the subject is weak. In this book Jenny Olive uses her extensive experience of teaching and helping students by giving a clear and confident presentation of the core mathematics needed by students starting science or engineering courses. The book contains almost 800 exercises, with detailed solutions given in the back to allow students who get stuck to see exactly where they have gone wrong. Topics covered include trigonometry and hyperbolic functions, sequences and series (with detailed coverage of binomial series), differentiation and integration, complex numbers, and vectors.
1. Basic algebra
some reminders of how it works
2. Graphs and equations
3. Relations and functions
4. Some trigonometry and geometry of triangles and circles
5. Extending trigonometry to angles of any size
6. Sequences and series
7. Binomial series and proof by induction
8. Differentiation
9. Integration
10. Complex numbers
11. Working with vectors.
From reviews of the first edition: '... a friendly book written in an engaging style ... It also contains very full, worked solutions to the exercises, which will greatly aid self-study. The introduction contains wise guidance on how to study and understand mathematics and the author's experience as a teacher comes out through her warnings of pitfalls and common errors ... it will be valued particularly by those who need to make up a deficiency in a specific topic or to remove the rust from their mathematics ... working through a few sections from Olive may be the prescription to cure the problem in many cases.' Nigel Steele, The Times Higher Education Supplement