2 Introduction
There are three appendices, covering background material that is necessary at
various points in the book. While some of this is elementary and may already
be familiar (Appendix A recalls some notation and various facts about real and
complex numbers that will be used throughout the book) some is a little more ad-
vanced. Problems with timetabling often mean that certain undergraduate courses
have to rely on material that is yet to be taught in others, hence there are appen-
dices on matrices, eigenvalues and eigenvectors (Appendix B) and on derivatives,
partial derivatives and Taylor series (Appendix C). The calculation of eigenvalues
and eigenvectors is treated in detail in the main part of the book.
The use of mathematical computer packages is now a standard part of the under-
graduate curriculum, and an important tool in the armoury of practising mathemati-
cians, scientists and engineers. Although the emphasis in the text is on pencil and
paper analysis, and the book in no way relies on the availability of such software,
some topics, particularly the treatment of coupled nonlinear equations using phase
plane ideas in Chapters 28–37, can benefit greatly from the graphical possibilities
modern computers provide. Almost all of the figures in this book have been gener-
ated using M
ATLAB, and very occasionally particular MATLAB commands are men-
tioned in the text. Nevertheless, it should be possible to carry out the numerical ex-
ercises suggested here using any of the major commercially available mathematical
packages; and with a little more ingenuity using any programming language with
graphical capabilities. The M
ATLAB files used to produce some of the figures, and
mentioned in certain of the exercises, are available for download from the web at
www.cambridge.org/0521533910.
There is no better way to learn this material than by working through a selection
of examples. One set of examples is included in what is, I hope, a natural way in
the text, with the end of each worked solution marked with a box (
). Another set
of examples is given in the exercises that end each chapter, and these should be
considered an integral part of the book. The majority consist of sample problems
that can be treated with the methods of the chapter – in order to give teachers a
reasonable choice of problems, there are intentionally more of these than you could
reasonably be expected to do. Others, labelled with a ‘T’, are more theoretical
and designed to give an indication of some of the mathematical issues raised, but
not treated in detail, in the text. Finally, those exercises labelled with a ‘C’ are
intended to encourage the use of the computer to perform routine calculations and
investigate equations and their solutions graphically. Those involved in teaching
courses based on this book may obtain copies of solutions to these exercises by
applying to the publisher by email (
solutions@cambridge.org).
I would welcome any comments or suggestions, either by post to the Mathe-
matics Institute, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, U.K. or by email
to
jcr@maths.warwick.ac.uk; any errata that arise will be posted on my own
website
www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/∼jcr/IntroODEs.html.