Calculus Calculus: One and Several Variables by Salas, Etgen, Hille

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The discussion centers around the book "Calculus: One and Several Variables" by Saturnino L. Salas, Garret J. Etgen, and Einar Hille. It is noted for its progressive exercises that effectively teach section concepts, but criticized for its terse explanations that often rely on dense jargon, making it less accessible for students. The consensus suggests that while the book provides a decent treatment of multivariate concepts and proves many theorems, it falls short in clarity and depth, particularly for those pursuing advanced studies in theoretical physics, such as quantum field theory (QFT). Users recommend seeking additional resources beyond this text for a comprehensive understanding necessary for graduate-level research.

For those who have used this book


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This book is good in that the exercises clearly teach the section concepts in a progressive fashion. It is not so good in that the explanations of the material seem to aim to use as few words as possible, and rely on some VERY dense jargon to save paper.

A few extra words per sentence would make this a great book. It's a failing I find common to 90% of mathematics texts. Popular calc texts should be split into 3 separate volumes, IMO. The explanations need to be fleshed out and accessible and understandable to students - not just math professors.
 
salas and hille was a classic, o do not remember the other guy.
 
Book isn't bad but isn't great either. Seems to straddle an unfortunate line in level of material between something like Apostol or Spivak and Stewart. Much better IMO to just sit down and work through Spivak etc. But it has an okay treatment of multivariate concepts and actually proves most of the theorems.

Although, looking back on it, I am shocked to say they didn't introduce the least upper bound property of R until chapter 11. Which is terrible...
 
Hi micromass, I just want to ask if Calculus by Salas is enough for theoretical physics undergraduates? I am curious because I want to do research in QFT in grad school and I'm thinking if my investment for Salas is enough.
 
shinobi20 said:
Hi micromass, I just want to ask if Calculus by Salas is enough for theoretical physics undergraduates? I am curious because I want to do research in QFT in grad school and I'm thinking if my investment for Salas is enough.
Salas, Hille, Etgen's Calculus is okay but if you want to do QFT, you pretty much need to go beyond this text. I have used this book for my elementary calculus classes only.
 
The book is fascinating. If your education includes a typical math degree curriculum, with Lebesgue integration, functional analysis, etc, it teaches QFT with only a passing acquaintance of ordinary QM you would get at HS. However, I would read Lenny Susskind's book on QM first. Purchased a copy straight away, but it will not arrive until the end of December; however, Scribd has a PDF I am now studying. The first part introduces distribution theory (and other related concepts), which...
I've gone through the Standard turbulence textbooks such as Pope's Turbulent Flows and Wilcox' Turbulent modelling for CFD which mostly Covers RANS and the closure models. I want to jump more into DNS but most of the work i've been able to come across is too "practical" and not much explanation of the theory behind it. I wonder if there is a book that takes a theoretical approach to Turbulence starting from the full Navier Stokes Equations and developing from there, instead of jumping from...

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