Which Mathematics Books are Essential for Studying Physics?

[ItsImpulse]

Hey there PF, I'm currently a high school student and I'm planning to do physics in college when I get there. However, I want to get my math up to scratch before I go deeper into it. I do have undergraduate level texts for physics but not for mathematics. I have managed to borrow 2 books, Introduction to Mathematics in Physics by Glenn Fletcher and Mathematical Techniques: An Introduction for the Engineering, Physical, and Mathematical Sciences by Jordan and Smith. I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with any of these books and could suggest which to use. Thanks :)

 

[atyy]

I haven't read either, but looked through the table of contents for Jordan and Smith on Amazon, and it looks great. Probably Fletcher's book is good too, since the material is pretty standard. You could use both. Sometimes one text explains it better for you than another. As an example of how standard the material is, you can also look at Nearing's free text http://www.physics.miami.edu/~nearing/mathmethods/.

Apart from basic calculus, the most important things in multivariable calculus for classical physics are the change of variables formula involving the Jacobian, and the divergence theorem and Stokes's theorem. For quantum mechanics, the most important thing is the formal definition of a vector space, the inner product, and the eigenvalue of an operator.