INTRODUCTION TO APPLIED MATHEMATICS "I've never written a review before, and probably never will again. But I had to do something to help publicize this fantastic book. I would give it 6 stars if I could.... In short, Strang's book is an elegant masterpiece. As a former college math major and current University science professor who uses computation daily in research, this is the best general "applied math" book I've ever seen. I highly recommend it to every graduate student and postdoc who passes through my lab. It is not a textbook in the usual sense, and is thus very different from Strang's much more widely known linear algebra texts. The level of the book is very mixed; parts are very elementary, and other sections really require advanced graduate background to fully comprehend. The book is "modern" in every sense, full of opinions and marvelous insights, and even very witty in places. As one example, the book completely skips the series solutions to the diffusion equation (about which most "applied math" books drone on for far too many pages) and cuts right to the Gaussian kernel solution. The discussion of Fourier analysis is fresh and excellent. The grouping of many ideas under the umbrella of "approach to equilibrium" and "minimum principles" is a superior organization. There are many other modernisms like these.... too many to count. Just from reading the preface, you can tell that this book was a labor of love for Strang, and it needs to be taken as such. Do not buy this book to cram for an exam -- buy it, and refer back to it often, to really learn modern applied math." ---From a review on amazon.com, Jay Ponder, St. Louis, Missouri