ArfKen_Preface-9780123846549.tex
xii Preface
needs to be built up so as to have relevant mathematical tools at hand and to gain experi-
ence in their use. This can only happen through the solving of problems, and it is for this
reason that the text includes nearly 1400 exercises, many with answers (but not methods
of solution). If you are using this book for self-study, or if your instructor does not assign
a considerable number of problems, you would be well advised to work on the exercises
until you are able to solve a reasonable fraction of them.
This book can help you to learn about mathematical methods that are important in
physics, as well as serve as a reference throughout and beyond your time as a student.
It has been updated to make it relevant for many years to come.
WHAT’S NEW
This seventh edition is a substantial and detailed revision of its predecessor; every word of
the text has been examined and its appropriacy and that of its placement has been consid-
ered. The main features of the revision are: (1) An improved order of topics so as to reduce
the need to use concepts before they have been presented and discussed. (2) An introduc-
tory chapter containing material that well-prepared students might be presumed to know
and which will be relied on (without much comment) in later chapters, thereby reducing
redundancy in the text; this organizational feature also permits students with weaker back-
grounds to get themselves ready for the rest of the book. (3) A strengthened presentation of
topics whose importance and relevance has increased in recent years; in this category are
the chapters on vector spaces, Green’s functions, and angular momentum, and the inclu-
sion of the dilogarithm among the special functions treated. (4) More detailed discussion
of complex integration to enable the development of increased skill in using this extremely
important tool. (5) Improvement in the correlation of exercises with the exposition in the
text, and the addition of 271 new exercises where they were deemed needed. (6) Addition
of a few steps to derivations that students found difficult to follow. We do not subscribe
to the precept that “advanced” means “compressed” or “difficult.” Wherever the need has
been recognized, material has been rewritten to enhance clarity and ease of understanding.
In order to accommodate new and expanded features, it was necessary to remove or
reduce in emphasis some topics with significant constituencies. For the most part, the
material thereby deleted remains available to instructors and their students by virtue of
its inclusion in the on-line supplementary material for this text. On-line only are chapters
on Mathieu functions, on nonlinear methods and chaos, and a new chapter on periodic sys-
tems. These are complete and newly revised chapters, with examples and exercises, and
are fully ready for use by students and their instuctors. Because there seems to be a sig-
nificant population of instructors who wish to use material on infinite series in much the
same organizational pattern as in the sixth edition, that material (largely the same as in
the print edition, but not all in one place) has been collected into an on-line infinite series
chapter that provides this material in a single unit. The on-line material can be accessed at
www.elsevierdirect.com.
