Dover Mathematics Books: Quality vs Quantity?

[ComputerGeek]

What is any of your opinions about this series of books?

I like the fact that they are so inexpensive as compared to their peers, but I was wondering what anyone thought of their quality.

 

[fourier jr]

generally i think they're really good, but when asking if a book is good or not you should name a specific title, since not every book put out by a particular publisher is good/bad, same with a series.

 

[math-chick_41]

dover has some top notch math texts in their catalog, I really like Foundations of Mathematical Analysis by Johnsonbaugh & Pfaffenberger
and General Topology by Willard.

 

[matt grime]

They are exceptionally good books. They are almost always the best in fact, really. They are cheap because they are older and proven; the more imprints of a book the cheaper it becomes. With few exceptions Dover books are the best ones to have for any subject.

There are exactly two problems with Dover books: 1, they are not good for cutting edge research, and 2) sometimes they aren't the best modern option (though I can count the number of instances of this problem on the fingers of one hand, and a hand with 2 fingers missing at that).

 

[fourier jr]

dover has some top notch math texts in their catalog, I really like Foundations of Mathematical Analysis by Johnsonbaugh & Pfaffenberger
and General Topology by Willard.

good choices my favourite topology book & one of my favourite analysis books

 

[mathwonk]

they seem to me also to be exceptionally good books, and unbeatable at the price. The price of a textbook often depends on the ease of reading for the modern student, which is quite a different thing from the mathematical quality of the book.

Thus excellent books from the past, when readers were expected to have some intelligence and background, and be willing to work, are often phased out of the modern classroom, and not selling well, wind up as 10 dollar dover editions.

these are often far superior to what is out there now for 100 dollars. I am currently searching for a suitable book from which to teach differential equations, and there are several wonderful dover books under 20 dollars.

i just bought an out of print dover edition of hurewicz great lectures on the subject for 4 dollars. Another classic by Tenenbaum and Pollard that I have not yet seen goes for 10 or 15 dollars, while highly inferior modern boks sell for over 100 dollars.

I am sick of this exploitation of the student body by publishers, and am trying to use more dover books in class, but the inability of the many members of the modern generation of students to read writing which is not dumbed down, makes it harder.One of my first dover books was the great treatise on electricity and magnetism of Maxwell!

Not only are the books better, but the publications valeus were always better too, the paper of higher quality and the pages bound in permanently sewn signatures.

 

[devious_]

Another classic by Tenenbaum and Pollard that I have not yet seen goes for 10 or 15 dollars

I would highly recommend that book.

And on the quality of Dover books, I would say from my experience that some are excellent while others not so good; it's just a matter of taste.

 

[JasonRox]

they seem to me also to be exceptionally good books, and unbeatable at the price. The price of a textbook often depends on the ease of reading for the modern student, which is quite a different thing from the mathematical quality of the book.

Thus excellent books from the past, when readers were expected to have some intelligence and background, and be willing to work, are often phased out of the modern classroom, and not selling well, wind up as 10 dollar dover editions.

these are often far superior to what is out there now for 100 dollars. I am currently searching for a suitable book from which to teach differential equations, and there are several wonderful dover books under 20 dollars.

i just bought an out of print dover edition of hurewicz great lectures on the subject for 4 dollars. Another classic by Tenenbaum and Pollard that I have not yet seen goes for 10 or 15 dollars, while highly inferior modern boks sell for over 100 dollars.

I am sick of this exploitation of the student body by publishers, and am trying to use more dover books in class, but the inability of the many members of the modern generation of students to read writing which is not dumbed down, makes it harder.


One of my first dover books was the great treatise on electricity and magnetism of Maxwell!

Not only are the books better, but the publications valeus were always better too, the paper of higher quality and the pages bound in permanently sewn signatures.

I couldn't agree more!

I'm a student, and I have to say that I see better textbooks at the 2nd hand bookstore than at the Campus Bookstore, for 10-20 times the price.

 

[fourier jr]

hocking/young's topology is also one of the best topology books out there. it's got a bunch of examples that aren't found anywhere else, like the lakes of wada.

 

[quantumdude]

Hocking and Young is on my bookshelf, as are many other Dover books. In fact I am just about to place a loooong list of Dover titles on order at Borders bookstore.

I am currently attempting to teach myself real analysis from the following two Dover books:

Introductory Real Analysis, by Kolmogorov and Fomin
Real Analysis, by Haaser and Sullivan

They are both very clear and logical. I guess my self-study is going OK because I am able to work out the exercises, which says a lot about the texts themselves.

 

[Pseudo Statistic]

What is any of your opinions about this series of books?
I like the fact that they are so inexpensive as compared to their peers, but I was wondering what anyone thought of their quality.

I've only read some of "Applied Partial Differential Equations" by Paul Duchateau and David Zachmann...
By the looks of it, it makes tons of sense and probably explains PDEs better than any other book I've read. (Although it focuses on numerical methods mostly)
Pretty cheap too... $16 :!)

 

[robphy]

Tensor Analysis for Physicists - Schouten
Tensor Calculus - Synge & Schild
Tensors, Differential Forms, and Variational Principles - Lovelock & Rund
...and I won't [have space to] mention Dover's Physics selection.

In some sense, I can't wait for some these classics to "come out in Dover".

 

[dicerandom]

Dover books are generally good, but I find it strange that they often have multiple books on the same subject. Maybe this is just because different people have different tastes and learning styles, but I sometimes find myself wondering which one I should get. For instance, when I started studying Calculus of Variations I picked up Weinstock's book since it was reccomended to me by a professor. I was having a hard time working through it and understanding the material, then a different professor reccomended Gelfand and Fomin, another Dover book, which I found to be much better. It took a bit of work, but it was a real treat when I finally understood why it is that the Euler-Lagrange equation works