This student-friendly text develops concepts and techniques in a clear, concise, easy-to-read manner, followed by fully-worked examples. Application problems drawn from the literature of many different fields prepares students to use the techniques covered to solve a wide variety of practical problems.

• A theme of comparing/contrasting numerical methods for accuracy, error, boundaries, and speed of convergence

• Unique topical coverage—Provides extensive coverage of material (especially PDEs and boundary value problems) not typically covered, or only briefly discussed, in other texts. E.g.,

  • Improper integrals.

  • Non-Dirichlet boundary conditions.

  • The handling of artificial singularities for one-dimensional boundary value problems.

  • The multigrid method and irregular domains for elliptic partial differential equations.

  • Source and decay terms, polar coordinates and problems in two space dimensions for parabolic partial differential equations.

  • One-dimensional hyperbolic partial differential equations.

  • Numerical dispersion and diffusion and the convection-diffusion equation.

  • Prepares students for the practical application of numerical methods; offers instructors flexibility in coverage—they can touch as lightly or as in depth as desired and design courses around students' interests.

• More than 200 fully-worked examples—The examples are each tied carefully to some new concepts.

  • Helps students grasp the sequence of calculations associated with a particular method and gain better insight into algorithm operation.

• An extensive set of application problems—Used both as worked examples and exercises. Problems are drawn from the literature of many different fields (physics, biology, chemistry, chemical engineering, thermodynamics, heat transfer, electrostatics, ecology, manufacturing, sociology, etc.).

  • Shows students how numerical methods can be applied within the context of real-world problems, and motivates their study of the various numerical techniques. Gives instructors the opportunity to discuss practical implementation issues.

• Chapters organized thematically around mathematical problems—Each chapter is devoted to a single type of problem. Within each chapter, the presentation begins with the simplest, most basic methods and progresses gradually to more advanced topics.

  • Helps students find parallels and better comprehend the topics.

• Chapter Overviews—Presents several real-world problems relating to the specific mathematical problem that will be treated in the chapter.

  • Places the material into perspective for students and motivates the reader with the broad applicability of numerical methods to real-world problems.

• Exercise Sets—Features roughly 1000 numbered exercises (many with multiple parts).  An appropriate balance of theoretical, applications, and coding questions.

  • Provides students with the opportunity to practice (with paper, pencil and calculator) the sequence of calculations associated with a particular method.

  • Gives students extensive practice in using numerical methods.

• Code available for instructors—Code for all methods discussed in the text will be available for faculty for both Maple and MATLAB (through a web site).

  • Gives instructors a reference guide.

• Absence of pseudocode—The author believes that with pseudocode provided, students feel like they don't need to really understand the techniques; they just have to be able to convert the pseudocode into whatever the language of choice happens to be.

  • Requires students to program the techniques themselves.