Solid Introductory Text to Ordinary Differential Equations

[treebeard]

Hi,

I am taking (ordinary) differential equations as a summer course and we are studying from a horrid textbook, in my opinion. Just curious if anyone might be able to suggest what is considered to be the "standard" introductory text on ODE.

While I'm certainly interested in PDE, I don't believe I'll take it as a university course, probably will study that on my own accord, thus a book concerned only with ODE is fine provided it is thorough and detailed with regard to the theory. (That said, if there is some monstrous text that covers everything DE and is amazing, I would look into purchasing it.)

I know Courant and Apostol get thrown around a lot as reccomendations for Calculus so I was wondering if there anything along those lines with regard to ODE.

 

[dkotschessaa]

This is from mathwonk on another thread:

I also disliked diff eq until I read the books of martin braun , hurewicz, guterman and nitecki, and especially arnol'd.

From his recommendation, I was able to find a copy of the guterman and nitecki book very cheaply on amazon, and I really like it. So far it's the first DE book that I've really liked, and if I had it for my first DE class I probably would have appreciated the subject better.

-Dave K

 

[the_wolfman]

I think Boyce and Diprima is one of the standard texts.

However I really like Tenenbaum and Pollard. Its an older book but its solid and a lot cheaper. It also covers a number of useful topics that modern introductory ODE courses like to skip.

 

[treebeard]

We're working out of Zill and Wright, it's not a horrible book in all honesty but in my experience so far with mathematics, I've found the older texts (50-70's) do a better job of getting at the heart of the concepts rather than trying to show everything from several viewpoints.

From his recommendation, I was able to find a copy of the guterman and nitecki book very cheaply on amazon, and I really like it. So far it's the first DE book that I've really liked, and if I had it for my first DE class I probably would have appreciated the subject better.

The Guterman and Nitecki book looks pretty good, I just imagine it is similar to the book we're working out of now. But the price is great on it (.30 cents plus shipping for the third edition prior to reprint) https://www.amazon.com/Differential-Equations-First-Course-Edition/dp/0030728789/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405095260&sr=8-1&keywords=guterman+and+nitecki.

However I really like Tenenbaum and Pollard. Its an older book but its solid and a lot cheaper. It also covers a number of useful topics that modern introductory ODE courses like to skip.

I've actually been considering buying a copy of Tenenbaum and Pollard for a couple of weeks now. Any chance you (or anyone) know how it compares to the book by Arnold and Silverman https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Differential-Equations-V-I-Arnold/dp/0262510189/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405095428&sr=8-2&keywords=arnol%27d?

 

[treebeard]

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=58036

Was not aware a thread had been constructed with regard to this topic already, my apologies.