Math 147: Calculus III,
Fall Semester 1997

Course Description

The calculus of 2 and 3 variables, optimization, integration, curves and surfaces, vector fields, and line integrals.

 

Text:  Multivariable Calculus, Preliminary Edition   By W. McMallum, D.              Hughes-Hallett, A. Gleason, et al.

 

I have problems with this text, not unlike the problems raised by others. For example, see letters to the editor of the Notices   of the AMS.  The book is too "lite"; there are not enough exercises; definitions are unnecessarily imprecise. Sometimes terminology is used sloppily. For example, the text defines what it means for a function of two variables to have a local extremum at point. That's all very well and good. But a few pages later, in the statement of the second derivative test, the book describes the condition under which a point is a local extremum of a function. This guarantees that some students will confuse the value of a function with its argument.

 

Our department will be reviewing calculus texts in view of making a new selection for the Fall of 1998.