Bücher von K. F. (University of Cambridge) Riley

The mathematical methods that physical scientists need for solving substantial problems in their fields of study are set out clearly and simply in this tutorial-style textbook. Students will develop problem-solving skills through hundreds of worked examples, self-test questions and homework problems. Each chapter concludes with a summary of the main procedures and results and all assumed prior knowledge is summarized in one of the appendices. Over 300 worked examples show how to use the techniques and around 100 self-test questions in the footnotes act as checkpoints to build student confidence. Nearly 400 end-of-chapter problems combine ideas from the chapter to reinforce the concepts. Hints and outline answers to the odd-numbered problems are given at the end of each chapter, with fully-worked solutions to these problems given in the accompanying Student Solutions Manual. Fully-worked solutions to all problems, password-protected for instructors, are available at www.cambridge.org/essential.

The new edition of this highly acclaimed textbook contains several major additions, including more than four hundred new exercises (with hints and answers). To match the mathematical preparation of current senior college and university entrants, the authors have included a preliminary chapter covering areas such as polynomial equations, trigonometric identities, coordinate geometry, partial fractions, binomial expansions, induction, and the proof of necessary and sufficient conditions. Elsewhere, matrix decompositions, nearly-singular matrices and non-square sets of linear equations are treated in detail. The presentation of probability has been reorganised and greatly extended, and includes all physically important distributions. New topics covered in a separate statistics chapter include estimator efficiency, distributions of samples, t- and F-tests for comparing means and variances, applications of the chi-squared distribution, and maximum likelihood and least-squares fitting. In other chapters the following topics have been added: linear recurrence relations, curvature, envelopes, curve-sketching, and more refined numerical methods.

This solutions manual accompanies the third edition of Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering, a highly acclaimed undergraduate mathematics textbook for physical science students. It contains complete worked solutions to over 400 exercises in the main textbook, that are provided with hints and answers.