Book Description

This second edition has been almost completely rewritten to create a textbook designed to provide flexibility for nearly any desired degree of rigor and depth of coverage. This is achieved with a linear development ensuring that material at any point is not dependent on subsequent developments and by means of graduated levels of sophistication. The text moves from traditional first principles in early chapters to deeper topics involving both theory and applications in later chapters. This allows for a traditional single-term course based on roughly half of the text without having to refer to more advanced topics while the later portion of the book facilitates a seamless two-term course covering the range of theory and applications generally reserved for discussions beyond fundamentals. Rigor is present throughout, but the level is adaptable because all major theorems have ample accompanying discussions and illustrative examples designed to convince readers and students of the validity of a result without a deep dive into the proof. Moreover, there is an expanded emphasis on both the depth and breadth of applications that are designed to illuminate the utility of the subject across broad areas of science and engineering. At major junctures there are photos and historical remarks concerning the personalities who created and contributed to the subject’s development. Throughout there are carefully constructed exercises ranging from easy to moderately challenging to difficult, many of which condition students for topics that follow.