Man Fong C F Chan – författare

This important book introduces perturbation and qualitative methods for differential equations in terms understandable to students with only a basic knowledge of calculus and ordinary linear differential equations. Theorems are stated clearly with their limitations and restrictions and are applied to solve examples from various disciplines. The writing style is informal and new ideas are introduced gradually via concepts already familiar to the reader.

This important book introduces perturbation and qualitative methods for differential equations in terms understandable to students with only a basic knowledge of calculus and ordinary linear differential equations. Theorems are stated clearly with their limitations and restrictions and are applied to solve examples from various disciplines. The writing style is informal and new ideas are introduced gradually via concepts already familiar to the reader.

This is a mathematical text suitable for students of engineering and science who are at the third year undergraduate level or beyond. It is a book of applicable mathematics. It avoids the approach of listing only the techniques, followed by a few examples, without explaining why the techniques work. Thus, it provides not only the know-how but also the know-why. Equally, the text has not been written as a book of pure mathematics with a list of theorems followed by their proofs. The authors' aim is to help students develop an understanding of mathematics and its applications. They have refrained from using clichés like “it is obvious” and “it can be shown”, which may be true only to a mature mathematician. On the whole, the authors have been generous in writing down all the steps in solving the example problems.The book comprises ten chapters. Each chapter contains several solved problems clarifying the introduced concepts. Some of the examples are taken from the recent literature and serve to illustrate the applications in various fields of engineering and science. At the end of each chapter, there are assignment problems with two levels of difficulty. A list of references is provided at the end of the book.This book is the product of a close collaboration between two mathematicians and an engineer. The engineer has been helpful in pinpointing the problems which engineering students encounter in books written by mathematicians.