Elementary Differential Equations

by Earl D. Rainville, Phillip Edward Bedient, Phillip E. Bedient

Book Overview

A clear, concise book that emphasizes finding solutions to differential equations where applications play an important role. Each chapter includes many illustrative examples to assist the reader. The book emphasizes methods for finding solutions to differential equations. It provides many abundant exercises, applications, and solved examples with careful attention given to readability. Elementary Differential Equations includes a thorough treatment of power series techniques. In addition, the book presents a classical treatment of several physical problems to show how Fourier series become involved in the solution of those problems. The eighth edition of Elementary Differential Equations has been revised to include a new supplement in many chapters that provides suggestions and exercises for using a computer to assist in the understanding of the material in the chapter. It also now provides an introduction to the phase plane and to different types of phase portraits. A valuable reference book for readers interested in exploring the technological and other applications of differential equations.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0023977701
• ISBN13: 9780023977701
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
• Length: 529 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Organized very well

I am teaching this course over the summer of 2004 and I find the organization of the book to be very good. I like that each of the sections covers one, and only one, topic at a time. This really allowed me to make a course that works for the summer (when time is severely limited).The book is very straight-forward in its explanations. However, the exposition is very limited. That means the reader will have to work out a lot of the details.As a teacher, the book works for me. I can furnish, in class, all of the details that are lacking - that's what they pay me for. For self study, I would not recommend this book because of the lacking details. I would have to go with the great book by Tenenbaum and Pollard for those that want to self study this subject.All in all, I really like the book's structure - each section has exactly one point to make, and then exercises to test the one topic in that section. Also, every other chapter has a collection of "miscellaneous problems" that I pull from for the tests. The miscellaneous problems are great, because I can tell my students that those are the problems I am going to use on their tests (a subset at least). That gets the students to work all of those problems (great motivation).I would give this book 5 stars if an instructor came with the book. Otherwise, it is a good book that leaves many of the simple and intricate details to the reader.

my favourite ODEs text!

I was stuck with Boyce/DiPrima for an ODEs course & I didn't like it, but I found this one in their bibliography & it turned out to be much better. I think there ARE enough examples to make things clear, and lots & lots of problems to work through. Also, it doesn't make a difference to me whether there's a solutions manual or if it has mistakes because I never use one; I just plug the solutions into the equation & see of they work. (I guess if there are mistakes, they should be fixed though)

Review of book

I like the name but not the price - the differential between the cost and my budget covers a large area. Also, whats going on with teh 8th edition? I doubt it is meaningfully different from the 1st. Or how about the 3rd, thats always a charm. All I can say is that its about math.