Great Price "Student's Solutions Manual, Single Variable for Thomas' Calculus" for $34.99 Today
I liked how this book gave many detailed graphs to help explain the concepts. My only complaint so far is how it vaguely explained to apply the Divergence theorem and then gave a pretty ambiguous picture that was pretty worthless to understanding what exactly it applied to.
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Student's Solutions Manual, Single Variable for Thomas' Calculus Overviews
This manual contains completely worked-out solutions for all the odd-numbered exercises in the text, covering Chapters 1--11.
Customer Review
Life saver - J.F.S. -
This manual was a life saver and was in great condition. It was delivered on time and I will be buying more products from this Amazon as well as this vendor in the future.
Helpful but somewhat lacking - B. Kelly - San Diego, CA
This is the first solutions manual that I have ever purchased, so I don't know how typical my issues with this solutions manual are in relation to others. I suspect they are.
First and foremost, calling it a solutions manual is misleading. I feel that it would be more appropriate to call it a partial solutions manual, since only the solutions to the odd-numbers problems are shown. I understand that they may have done this to allow instructors the option of assigning the even numbered problems as homework. Unfortunately, because neither the solutions or just the final answers are available, it renders the even numbered problems useless for the sake of practice. My current calculus professor, as well as most of my other math and science professors past and present, either place very little or no emphasis on homework in terms of overall grade. Ultimately, even if a student were to copy all the answers and hand them in, they won't do very well on the exams. The point of homework to provide the repetition needed to understand and master the material, so what good is doing a problem that you can't even find out whether you got the right answer? In fact, doing so might even reinforce bad techniques and habits.
Secondly, I have encountered numerous cases where the solutions, especially in the later sections, make a big jump from one step to the next. This usually in the case of some sort of trig identity or algebraic trick that was used in previous chapters. I get the argument that it is usually something that should already be known, but what advantage could omitting it have for the student? In a few of the cases I have encountered, I would be afraid my instructor would take off points on an exam for leaving out the step.
These issues cause me to wonder if they are simply the result of the publisher cutting corners to reduce overhead. It kind of seems that way. I will say that it is better than nothing, and does provide a good resource to check your work against on the odd numbered problems. If you are putting in the time necessary to learn a difficult subject like calculus, this book will be helpful in affirming that you are not only getting the right answers, but also getting them in an appropriate and efficient way. I simply feel that the shortcomings of this solutions manual render it mediocre in terms of being a learning tool. If there were other options it wouldn't be so bad, but when a school chooses to use a particular text, and only half the answers are even available, it feels a little bit like your getting taken advantage of.
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