What is Reddit's opinion of Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering: A Comprehensive Guide?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Bro if you want a math book I recommend https://www.amazon.in/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710 I did that to strengthen my linear algebra and vector calculus after doing the MIT ocw courses, will be useful for college too

It's a bit advanced and doesn't hold your hand, so don't beat yourself up if it takes a long time or is difficult. But if you work through Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering by K.F. Riley et. al. step by step and really follow their reasoning you will have an extremely strong basis to attack any problem and learn more if you need it. Most bachelors degrees won't give you as good a basis as this book. I credit my success in math to this book, can't recommend highly enough https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710

Since you’re an engineer(?), I found this on Amazon as commonly bought with the Handbook of Math seen above. As a physicist I kinda want it.

Certainly this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710

I have received recommendations for this book from several physics majors and alumni from several different universities. It is a rather thick textbook, but I think most of the chapters can be addressed independently at your current level, especially after this first year of yours. Write it down somewhere in a Google Doc, including the authors and that it's the third edition.

Second year UK undergrad here.

In my first year our maths course covered:

1. Lots of calculus including multiple integrals
2. Complex numbers
3. Ordinary differential equations
4. Basic linear algebra

These mainly prepare you for thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. Out of all of it I would say the calculus is by far the most important.

If you can get your hands on it, I found this book greatly useful (you only need bits of it): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710

Feel free to reply if you have any questions.

So I'm almost done with my first semeter of graduate physics in the US. Some insights from grad and undergrad:

​

> To start it off, damn, that’s a ton of math

Look up "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" sometime. All that math is needed because... well... it works. OK there is [probably] a deeper reason, but the short answer is that math is a really powerful tool and a sort of language. You have to be able to speak the language which means you have to immerse yourself in it.

It's never going to go away. Lenz's Law for example is a minus sign. OK I'm over simplifying what's going on but that little minus sign sitting in front of Faraday's Law of Induction has a physical meaning and it's important. We have to be mathematicians, and we get to be physicists when we apply that math to a physical system.

It's also a tool: you'll learn Newtonian physics, then Lagrangian and eventually Hamiltonian formalisms, which are tools to understand the system in question. They require a lot of formalism to really take advantage of (Newtonian is the most straight forward), and some are better suited at things then others, so you can think of them like power saws, table saws, and hand saws: you can't just pull out one and start working with it without having some sense of safety and training. Not that you're going to loose a finger with Hamiltonian Mechanics but you might go a little crazy.

​

> I didn’t enroll in this degree to spend most of my time doing formal proves.

No one actually does, but at the same time we all did. At least we didn't realize it at the time. Several advances in math were driven by physics, and some advances in physics were driven by math. The big example is calculus. It goes back to the immersion part of the Math Language. Sure you probably wont be doing a formal proof of 2+2 any time soon, but having the ability to prove something is a nice tool to have. My advanced mechanics homework just had me prove some properties of the Canonical Equations. It's not formal, but it's in the ballpark.

Also, side note: start thinking of trig as another appendage of your body. I'm saying this with a straight face: think of it as a sixth finger on each hand.

​

> The physics course has been uneventful so far

Yes. It will be. I was doing basic physics for like a year before it got interesting, and it's sort of a major flaw with how you learn physics. But at the same time it's hard to teach the advanced stuff without - wait no... that's battlebots... sorry I've been watching clips of that for fun - knowing the deep math behind it. My 2nd year it started to get fun, but it wasn't until my 3rd year where the physics started to get... physicsy. So it really takes some patience to get there.

Fun side note: my undergrad mechanics textbook was Classical Mechanics by Taylor, and my graduate mechanics textbook is Landau with supplements from... Taylor. It's just that good of a book that my grad professor told us to find a copy.

​

> I think it would greatly help my motivation to get some perspective on how this pure math methods of set theory and stuff will help modeling more complex physics Problems

This is really the best attitude to have: why in the flying fuck am I doing all this math? Well like I said it's a language, and you need to be totally immersed in that language. The tricky part is to develop a way to physically interpret what all that math tells you.

Not that it's going to be super useful for you right now, but down the line there's a book I love called Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering. It's a textbook on all the math you will ever need as a physicist written by physicists for physicists.

Also check out 3 blue 1 brown and a few other youtube creators. 3B1B is probably the best since he's all about telling you how to see the forest for the trees. His series on Linear Algebra helped me figure out what the hell was going on in my Quantum Mechanics homework.

Check this book out: Chapter 18 - Special Functions

You can also find it for free on the Genesis Library.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521679710/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_i_nZ-mFb5T893EE

This is the best math/physics/engineering book out there. It covers the trig basics and gets you going into the more complicated stuff smoothly.

For a reference book, the only book for me us Mathematical Methods for Physicists and Engineers by Riley, Hobson, and Bence. It is around 1300 pages of literally any mathematics you might need up to quantum operators, statistics, and any other thing. There are included examples, practice problems, where it might appear in applications.

I used this for my engineering mathematics course a few years ago and is one of the few books that I managed to keep. Can be dense if new to the material, but a fantastic reference.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710

There is probably a version online somewhere as well.

A book am using is Thomas Cala and it looks like a good book on it https://www.amazon.com/s?k=thomas%27+calculus+12th+edition&i=stripbooks&crid=348T2AR8JCUJA&sprefix=Thomas%27+Calculus+12%2Cstripbooks%2C187&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_19 .
Also try https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710/ref=pd_ybh_a_19?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=AH70YHCXP3QJKG2560EF

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710

I use this book for EVERYTHING

I've got Riley Hobson Bence (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Comprehensive/dp/0521679710) and it covered everything I needed for undergrad physics.