Basic Concepts of Mathematics

Author	Elias Zakon	Entered	2002-05-05 06:28:26 by kalkibagawan
Edit	edit data record	Freedom	Copyrighted, doesn't cost money to read, but otherwise not free (disclaimer)
Subject	Q.A - Mathematics. Computer science (Mathematics)
Read	http://www.trillia.com/zakon1.html This link was reported to be OK by user liangzhaojian on 2003-12-13 06:13:32 You can't update this URL or report it OK or broken because you aren't logged in.
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Excellent for the novice Math student
by jsprpl on 2003-01-27 07:08:59, review #232

content
better than 80%

writing
better than 90%

I encountered this book while browsing through www.eevl.ac.uk . It's goal is to prepare you for your first encounter with analysis. It is divided into three chapters. The first is about set theory, the second about the real number system and the third about vector spaces. I have to say I only read the first chapter and part of the second (yet). 'Basic Concepts...' has a very 'clean' feeling to it. The text seems structured and to the point without losing any detail. The book doesn't waste your time trying to translate basic concepts into layman's terms from which you will have to 'recover' at a later stage and are better understandable when served 'straight up'. For example in the second chapter you are immediately introduced to the field axioms and not, as other texts do, to 'properties of numbers' only to be told a year later that, 'by the way', these are referred to as the axioms of an ordered field. There is a strong focus on making the student familiar with the proper notation right from the start. For example quantifiers are introduced very early where as other texts seem to take hundreds of pages to get there even though quantifiers are very useful even to the most novice of math students. The author helps you in seeing that the right notation makes mathematics clearer and thus easier to understand, that notation is something useful not something to break your head over. I like to see 'Basic Concepts...' as a toolbox in which you can find the basic tools to start studying analysis. It doesn't leave you in fear of what's to come but with a feeling of preparedness. Which probably is a wrong feeling ;-) This book comes highly recommended. It is probably useful as well to those already deep into their analysis study to occasionally 'unconfuse' themselves about some of the basic concepts.

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The contents of this web page, except the parts contributed by members of The Assayer, are copyright (c) 2000 by Benjamin Crowell, and are copyleft licensed under the Open Publication License 1.0, without options A or B.