Book Reviews

Abstract

Readers should be grateful to Gerhard Wanner for his substantial effort in evaluating the three-volume reform calculus text by Eriksson, Estep, and Johnson as this issue's featured review. Finding effective ways to teach undergraduates calculus remains an important and substantial challenge to many of us. We can all agree that applications and computation must play an increasing role in such efforts, especially concerning motivation. If rigor is deemphasized, aren't teachers/authors still expected to be careful that the formulations they provide remain ultimately appropriately correct? Different audiences have different needs. Some will have later courses in advanced calculus, real and complex analysis, differential equations, or numerical analysis, where inadequacies in calculus could cause problems or be corrected. Others, however, will have no later opportunity to realize that the material learned may be more subtle than they naively conceive. We can only encourage more applied mathematicians to worry about the essential underlying issues of pedagogy and exposition. We can be sure that tomorrow's successful calculus books will be different from those we learned from. Let's be sure they are an improvement! We also wish to thank my colleague Mark Kot for his substantial efforts over many years finding reviewers for many of the books you read about here. Although he now wishes to cut back on this effort, we hope to continue to be able to rely on his advice and judgment regarding what's worth comment among applied mathematical publications.