Mathematical Techniques

Book excerpt: All students of engineering, science, and mathematics take courses on mathematical techniques or `methods', and large numbers of these students are insecure in their mathematical grounding. This book offers a course in mathematical methods for students in the first stages of a science or engineering degree. Its particular intention is to cover the range of topics typically required, while providing for students whose mathematical background is minimal. The topics covered are: * Analytic geometry, vector algebra, vector fields (div and curl), differentiation, and integration. * Complex numbers, matrix operations, and linear systems of equations. * Differential equations and first-order linear systems, functions of more than one variable, double integrals, and line integrals. * Laplace transforms and Fourier series and Fourier transforms. * Probability and statistics. The earlier part of this list consists largely of what is thought pre-university material. However, many science students have not studied mathematics to this level, and among those that have the content is frequently only patchily understood. Mathematical Techniques begins at an elementary level but proceeds to give more advanced material with a minimum of manipulative complication. Most of the concepts can be explained using quite simple examples, and to aid understanding a large number of fully worked examples is included. As far as is possible chapter topics are dealt with in a self-contained way so that a student only needing to master certain techniques can omit others without trouble. The widely illustrated text also includes simple numerical processes which lead to examples and projects for computation, and a large number of exercises (with answers) is included to reinforce understanding.