» Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus, Fourth Edition

Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus, Fourth Edition Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good for majors too.
Comment: Really, most math majors will like this book. It is quick and vivid and correct. Complete proofs are in another gem, Calculus on Manifolds, by Spivak, very compatible with this book. Unless you are a complete demon for differential geometry or surrounded by friends who already know this material, you are likely to benefit from this.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply amazing
Comment: This little gem of a book is simply amazing. It managed to explain in a clear and concise manner how line and surface integrals are derived along with how div and curl are tied into those. Something Anton and Larson (with the latter making a considerably better effort) could not achieve. Everything started to make sense after reading/referencing this book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: no complaints
Comment: even if i tried, i couldn't find anything to complain about. The book looks great and it arrived in a timely fashion.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Concise- good for an engineer who needs a quick vector calc review.
Comment: This book is not a vector calculus panacea, but it's the perfect length for a decent review of the subject in just a few days.

It was written for electromagnetics students and it is quite excellent for that.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not as super as some make it to be. Buy the cheaper older edition.
Comment: I picked this book up, based on the reviews that said it would explain vector calculus to "engineers". I probably read the book 3 times, but I never felt I really _undestood_ the material. A few years later, I think I do understand the material; looking at the book, many of the things I read seem obvious now. I feel this is where most of the reviewers were coming from...

The book is great if you already know the material, and just need a nice, unifying refresher. It is not that great for learning it the first time, since there is very little application of the material, and for me that is what motivates me to understand something. Morse & Feshbach is much more rigorous and dense, but that is where it first "clicked" for me. Also, I think this book is supposed to be in tandem with a more standard Calculus reference. Between two books one might have a better time at figuring things out.

There are a few very good figures in the book that have helped me understand some key concepts (the flowchart relating the different operators and their associated assumptions), but the lack of rigor and general long-windedness of the book could actually be considered a fault, rather than a benefit "for engineers".

Also, buy the cheapest edition of this book you can find. They are all basically the same (only the problems and very minor wording change between editions). Don't think you need to get the latest edition, get a cheaper earlier edition.

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