Probably I ought to explain why one more book on numerical methods can be useful. Without any doubt, there are many quite good and excellent books on the subject. But I know definitely that I did not realize this when I was a student. In this book, my first desire was to present those lectures that I wished I would have heard when I was a student. Besides, in spite of the profusion of textbooks, introductory courses, and monographs on numerical methods, some of them are too elementary, some are too difficult, some are far too overwhelmedwith applications, and most of them are too lengthy for those who want to see the whole picture in a short time. I hope that the brevity of the course left me no chance to obscure the beauty and depth of mathematical ideas behind the theory and methods of numerical analysis. I am convincedthat such a book should be very conciseindeed. It should be thoroughly structured, giving information in short sections which, ideally, are a half-page in length. Equally important, the book should not give an impression that nothing is left to work on in this field. Any time it becomes possible to say something about modern development and recent results, I do try to find time and place for this.
