Mathematics. A first course with problems and solutions
The book contains the material for an introductory university course in mathematics, written for students in economics and social sciences at an Austrian university (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien). The author states that the purpose of the book is to bridge the gap from cookbook middle school mathematics to more creative university mathematics. To accomplish this he stresses the understanding rather than the memorization of mathematical facts and sees this as a path leading the student to efficient and meaningful use of mathematics in practical problem solving. The book begins in Chapter 1 with Peano's system of axioms for the natural numbers and proceeds from there to an introduction of the integers, rational, irrational, and complex numbers and their algebraic and order theoretic properties. Chapter 2 introduces set theory, its axioms and its paradoxes, and it includes a brief discussion of fuzzy sets. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to the study of linear algebra with all the classical topics represented. Matrices, vectors, vector spaces, solutions of systems of linear equations, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, determinants, and also the tensor product of matrices. After a brief introduction of groups and their properties (Chapter 5) and a short chapter on the principle of induction (Chapter 6), the emphasis shifts to the study of the calculus of real valued functions of one variable. To prepare for this task, the properties of polynomial and rational functions are studied in Chapter 7. Included in this study are Horner Schemata to compute function values, methods to locate the roots of polynomials, Lagrange Interpolation and a thorough treatment of Partial Fractions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the binomial theorem as a preparation for the Taylor series of calculus. The remaining Chapters 8-16 cover classical calculus, starting with limits, sequences and series, continuous functions, proceeding to differentiation and integration, and concluding with Taylor series and power series. The book is very clearly written, mostly dry, precise and to the point, with an occasional excursion into wry humor. (On commutativity of algebraic operations: ``Not everything in human life is commutative: There is a big difference between drinking ten glasses of wine on one occasion and drinking one glass of wine on ten different occasions (proof by experiment!).) Some but not many exercises are interspersed with the text. All exercises are of a theoretical nature, dealing either with a computational or with a conceptual aspect of the mathematics. None of the practical applications of the calculus or of linear algebra are mentioned.
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