Mathematical Methods for Physicists
EUR 46,75
Good reference during all undergraduation and later on. - The book is good to be used as reference/consulting by physics students after the first year when all the methods in the book startto appear in the disciplines. Not recomended as a textbook. It isalso a good reference for physicists and graduatestudents that work in the fields related to e.g. quantum mechanics, eletromagnetism. Missing in this book are a more complete treatment of differential equations and therefore not recomendend for people who works e.g. on nonlinear dynamics.
A physicists handbook for mathematics -- not a textbook - The lecturer of our undergraduate Mathematical Methods for Physics course said that he recommends Arfken s book because it will be useful also later as a reference book. Hearing those words, I could not help but to think this is one of *those* books. And indeed, although Arfken s and Weber s book covers quite a wide range of mathematics, it does so by being very concise, e.g. there is usually only one example per topic. This is one example of why it is not a good textbook. Not following Arfken s course, I will give another example: there are no answers and no solutions for any of the problems, making it very undesirable from the viewpoint of the person who cannot attend all the lectures. Finally, text itself is quite concise, and often it stops at telling the things rather than explaining them also. I guess I have to admit that I am not one of the excellent students mentioned by a reviewer, for I liked Kreyszig s Advanced Engineering Mathematics much more. As a contrast to Arfken s book, it offered many examples and helped to understand what the thing was all about. Unfortunately, it does not cover nearly all of the topics covered by Mathematical Methods for Physicists. If Mathematical Methods for Physicists is going to be your first introductory text to these topics and if you are not supported by very good lectures I can only say that may God have mercy on your soul.
It has its uses - I write this review because I believe the other two reviews in the customer section give the wrong impression. The material in Arfken should be known by any beginning graduate student in physics. If however one is not familiar with all the topics, one should study an undergraduate textbook concerned with the area of deficiency (which ever is most popular for that subject). Arfken is then best used to jar the memory with examples that are often abridged examples from the aforementioned undergraduate texts. As for an undergraduate taking a course where Arfken is the primary text, I m confused. Obviously you should know everything in Arfken but he doesn t get to the meat of any given subject. You might as well get cliff notes for physics. (Schaums)
Not a math text - Arfken s book has become a classic in mathematical physics teaching, but I don t think it could be regarded as a good text for such purpose because its is not really a mathematical text. This book is just a collection of formulas, EASY examples, problems, and references, and as such it is quite good, but the indefense undergraduate needs more than that to tackle the subject.As a working mathematician I use the book mostly as a list of formulas. When I was a teacher I also found here a lot of interesting exercises to include in the exams.As a conclusion, I find the text good as a reference, but bad as a course text.
A excellent book only for excellent students ! - Mathematics - the queen of science ! while physicists deal with more creativity they need mathematical tools to back their conjectures ! Of course when I say physicists I don t mean to say people who possess PhD s to show off but the ones who can create `physics and physicists ! This book is for hardcore math wizards, ones that are more prone towards solving problems of the likes of Putnam exam and IMO/IPhO kinds. So if you are upto the challenge BUY it, else it s much beneficial for you to buy a book which exemplifies each and every theorem simplistically. **WARNING** you need to have a very strong background in Maths to be able to comprehend some stuff, so try this book after acquiring the requisite from some other easier books. Only then can you extract gold from this one !