Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers, by Jan Gullberg

[Aaron]

Hi,

I’m taking time to study in preparation to go back to graduate school. And one class I should know well before I arrive is ordinary differential equations. The last time I took diff-e-que was 20 years ago. I’m rusty.

So I found a book called “Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers,â€

[hrolf]

with respect, you will find the history of mathematics to be fascinating, but inadequate preparation for graduate study in a technical field.

I assume you have full knowledge of trigonometry, and suggest the following texts:

Calculus: Early Trancandentals. James Stewart; thompson, isbn: 0-534-39321-7. This is the definitive comprehensive text for calculus of one or many variables, and also contains brief reviews of preliminaries like functions and other precalc concepts.

Differential Equations. Blanchard, Devany, and Hall; Brooks&cole, isbn: 0-534-38514-1. This is my favorite ODE book. Elegantly writtten, and both possible and pleasurable to follow and comprehend.

you will also find a book on linear algebra to be of great help - while not necessary, it turns out you can use linalg to solve any ode without actually doing calculus.

also head over to http://ocw.MIT.edu for course lectures and material on these sorts of courses, available for free. (I know for a fact that PDFs of Stewart can be found online. However, I suspect you aren't the nautical type. )

[Derian le Breton]

<u>div, grad, curl, and all that</u> is pretty great too.

-Derian.