Ask HN: Any suggestions of materials on Partial Differential Equations?

7 points·pedrodelfino··5 comments

I am especially keen on materials that provide a gentle introduction to the topic with good exercises and answer sheets. Thanks.

View on HN

Stanley Farlow's "Partial Differential Equations for Scientists and Engineers" would be my suggestion for an introduction. It's a Dover book, so it's cheap. Look at the book as a set of simple introductions to a large number of PDE related topics, many of which have applications beyond PDEs, e.g., the Laplace transform, conformal mapping, perturbation methods, etc. The book would disappoint anyone looking for rigor. You can refer to a more advanced book for that.

The book has relatively few exercises, but the ones present are definitely worth your time. I recall working out a large fraction of them before I took a PDE class as an undergraduate. Dover will also send you a scan of the solutions manual if you contact them. As I recall a few exercises had mistakes in their solutions, but I had no trouble spotting the mistakes as a novice.

Consider a book on numerical methods first perhaps, and then something more theoretical to dive into the theory, I went to Berkeley so Evans was a popular book in that regard.

Interesting, usually, I learned numerical methods after learning the theory, like in linear algebra. Many books follow this order. Inverting the process sounds like a good idea. Specially for people who love programming, like me. Thanks.

Advanced Engineering Mathematics by K.A Stroud might be of interest. It contains exercises and answer sheets but covers a lot more than PDEs.

We used Haberman. I think you can find a solution book. I'm not really sure what constitutes a gentle introduction. Half the class probably flunked or should have!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com