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Monday 19 July 2010

Comments on Applied Numerical Analysis, by Curtis F. Gerald, Patrick O. Wheatley, 3rd Edition

On the bright side, the text is well written in American English with few typographical errors. Its text is full of worked examples, figures, graphs and tables with actual results of approximations. The problems at the end of each chapter help the reader to become familiar with the techniques, in a practical way. There are also computer programs for the reader, to practice, that is reusable source code in c, FORTRAN and for other tools, common nowadays, such as Maple, etc.
On the dark side, there are no proofs of theorems, which are of theoretical interest, especially to the mathematicians.
All in all, the book is a huge success, now at the 7th edition, suitable for engineers, or readers fond of the practical view of mathematics.

Comments on Numerical Solution Of Partial Differential Equations: Finite Difference Methods, 2nd Edition by G.D. Smith, Oxford Press

On the bright side, the text is very well written, in British English, with a few spelling errors. It is quite clear and moderately easy to follow. In addition, the text is full of figures, graphs and worked examples.
On the dark side its second edition, (1977) which I have studied, has no unsolved exercises, problems or any questions to reinforce learning and apply the theoretical techniques. Moreover, the book is not accompanied by any program or source code for tools such as Matlab or Mathematica.
All in all, the book is a success, now in its 3rd edition. Its main readers should be mostly students of mathematics, but not of engineering.