Numerical Methods

In this text, the authors provide a sophisticated introduction to the approximation techniques that are used to solve the problems that arise in science and engineering; they show students why the methods work, what type of errors to expect, and when an application might lead to difficulties; and they provide information about the availability of high-quality software for numerical approximation routines. Numerical Methods is designed for the one-semester course, but contains at least 50 percent more material than needed to give instructors flexibility in the topics they cover and to provide students with a useful reference text for future work. The techniques covered in this text are essentially the same as those covered in the Fifth Edition of these authors' top-selling Numerical Analysis text, but the emphasis is much different. In this text, full mathematical justifications are provided only if they are concise and add to the understanding of the methods. Instead, the emphasis is placed on describing each technique from an implementation standpoint, and on convincing the student that the method is reasonable both mathematically and computationally. The use of technology is integral to this course, and text-specific programs written in both FORTRAN and Pascal are packaged with the text.

J. Douglas Faires, late of Youngstown State University, pursued mathematical interests in analysis, numerical analysis, mathematics history, and problem solving. Dr. Faires won numerous awards, including the Outstanding College-University Teacher of Mathematics by the Ohio Section of MAA and five Distinguished Faculty awards from Youngstown State University, which also awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Science award in 2006.