Using Spivak's Calculus to prep for honors Real Analysis

[torquerotates]

Hi, my university is offering a honors version of real analysis based off of Rudin's principals of mathematical analysis. I've heard that Spivak is good preparation so I bought it. It has 30 something chapters so I don't know if I can go through it all. Generally, for anybody who knows, how much of the book should I go through if I want to be prepared to tackle the likes of Rudin?

 

[Crosson]

The best way to prepare for a class using Rudin is to read Rudin! Then when you get stuck, look up the corresponding topic in Spivak, where it should be covered in more depth.

 

[Howers]

People get killed in Rudin not because they don't have the necessary background, but because they are not good at proofs. So learning to do math proofs would serve you better than any intro analysis text.

Having said that, if you are using Spivak you would need to do the first 20 chapters or so. Many will say do all his problems, I think that's too extreme - and time consuming. A good effort on 10 questions per section will do you more good than spending 10 minutes on each one and looking up the answer. Here is a link to a course at UT that uses Spivak first year, follow it along http://www.math.toronto.edu/~drorbn/classes/0405/157AnalysisI/index.html