MATLAB

This is probably the worst book in Scientific computation. This book doesnot explain any topic in depth. It's a waste of money to buy this book.

Pavlov's dogs could have been trained to write a better textbook on Matlab computing then the author has done. In fact, I believe this book was written and produced by 1,000 monkeys instead of an esteemed Cornell professor. The examples in the book rarely work and I believe that any careful reader will realize that anyone who gives this book a positive review is a complete tool that probably has nothing better to do than to make excuses for his domestic partner's poor job at crafting such an overpriced waste of tree pulp. It seems to me that professors @ Cornell should stay out of the publishing industry because they just can't seem to get anything right. As for the positive reviewers of this text, I believe they should get some of that South African homegrown Viagra "on tap" and have "a thought-provoking and exciting" time for once in their sad sad lives.

I am in the professors class and the lectures are just as incomprehensible as the book. This book uses mathematics to obscure mathematical concepts beyond recognizability. Its unfortunate that this book has wiped out any interest I might have had in numerical analysis. It is not a good reference for anything except for how to write a terrible book. Specifically, the code doesn't make sense and is often inconsistent, the explanations are scanty, typos are abundant, and any knowledge to be had is lost in the muddle. Don't bother with thisbook.

I am trying to learn the subject by reading this and Gelb. Even though this book covers a lot of introductory concepts, it is lacking proper derivation of equations that I usually see in most math and physics textbooks. I find this book very disappointing for its price.

I have read over simplified and over complicated descriptions
of the Kalman filter for years. The theoretical discussion is
well matched to the examples. THe authors have obviously had
extensive experiance TEACHING to a wide range of students and
the book benefits from their experiance.

I was able to program filters for three of the examples that
most closely match my own applications and exploit what I
learned in a matter of hours. The MATLAB code was useful, but
not critical.

I use this book on a daily basis. It is worth its weight in gold.

If you have matlabs documentation by you, you should read it carefully and avoid buying this "book", wich is nothing but the authors reprinting of it. What I really dont understand is what the subtitle "for Scientists and Engineers" is supposed to mean. If you are either a Scientist or an Engineer, so you shouldt buy this cd. If you are in highschool and are slowminded, so go for it...

This book is indeed a basic text - however it misses the mark a bit and is a bit too basic ! For example - in several places the author describes the early development of computers in general and not the development of MATLAB (iam not to sure that such a history would be relevent anyway). Even so, the use of MATLAB glossarys is good and the inclsuion of various M-Files with the CD is a good idea. But what ever possesed the publisher to create the book solely on CD ! This is a terrible format to produce books in - i had to spend 3 days by the printer waiting for the chapers to come out - the additional expense that was incurred by me enraged me ! A collection of PDF files on CD ROM should not cost 25 dollars ! for this price i would expect a text book as well as the cd rom - if this is the trend that will be picked up by publisher then we are all in for some rough times ahead !

If you are familiar with computers and want to learn MATLAB, then you buy Higham & Higham. If you want to learn numerical analysis, then you buy one of several good books that teach MATLAB in an appendix. But if you want to learn to program and think MATLAB would be useful in your work, then this is the best of the books that I have seen.

I'm teaching such a programming course this semester, so I'll be able to evaluate with more confidence afterward. So far, I like the author's sense of humor, comments on examples, and pithy maxims. Since one of these is that "programming is not a spectator sport", I hope that this book will help students who need a detailed introduction get it while reading and playing with MATLAB. The lectures can supplement with interesting applications that build on the material in the order that it is presented (at the rate of a chapter per each lecture).

CD-only distribution is a potentially fatal flaw. Fortunately, the price is low so even if you print from the CD, it is still cheaper than Herniter's paperback textbook, and maybe even Hahn's.

Cooper's book does some things quite well. While most courses on PDE's are reduced to repetitive applications of separation of variables and Fourier series, Cooper offers a new approach. He goes by equation rather than by technique, and introduces nonlinear equations and numerical methods very early. Separation of variables and Fourier series do not come up until Chapter 4. The first chapter, which reviews elements of analysis, is a very good reference. MATLAB is well incorporated throughout the text.

The reason I do not rate this book more highly is that the writing is unbelievably sloppy. There are at least five typos per chapter, usually more. Crucial things, like Green's first identity, are misprinted. There are dozens of typos in the answers in the back, which makes it very hard to check your work.

Judging just by the content, this is a very good book. However, the misprints in the math (to say nothing of those in the text) are so severe that I would not recommend buying it until a better-proofread edition comes out.

This is a fairly challenging text. It's currently being used in my undergrad PDE course, and the flow of material is a bit out of the ordinary. The book starts off with the method of characteristics and weak solutions, which are slightly more sophisticated and unusual topics than some of the later material, making it difficult to get started. The focus on using Matlab is nice, and most things are fairly well-explained. Typographical errors are rampant, however, making it very poor for self-study (you need someone to point out the errors to you).

All in all, not bad -- the second edition will hopefully be much better, and if you have a decent grounding in multivariate calc and ODE's, you'll be OK.