Ninth Edition
Burden & Faires
Ninth Edition
Burden & Faires
History of the Numerical Analysis text
by Burden and Faires
The first edition of Numerical Analysis was published
more than 30 years ago, as the first book to provide a full-year
treatment of methods for approximating
the solution to mathematical problems for undergraduates in science
and engineering. Through our various editions we have endeavored to keep the book current, but of a manageable size and within the
mainstream of the curriculum in undergraduate science and engineering.
In the following paragraphs we will describe some of the new features in this edition. Detailed information on the changes can be found in the Preface of the book, and seen from the Table of Contents.
Ninth Edition
The Ninth edition of this book (ISBN-13: 978-0-538-73351-9; ISBN-10: 0-538-73351-9) was published by Brooks-Cole, Cengage Learning in August 2010. For this edition, we have added substantially to the material on Numerical Linear Algebra. This was done to provide more detailed information on this important subject, and to describe the Singular Value Decomposition of an arbitrary matrix.
We have also added a large number of new exercises, and additional notes that detail some of the History of Numerical Analysis. We have also taken advantage of the slightly larger margin width to add comments that emphasize important points to the reader. We hope that these will give more insight to students studying the subject, and will also add to the human element of numerical approximation techniques.
Presentation Material
Accompanying the Ninth Edition of Numerical Analysis is a set of PDF files that can be used for classroom or personal Presentations. We are quite excited about this feature for a number of reasons. First, the presentations give an excellent visual approach to the various techniques, and parallel the material in the book. This eliminates the need for students to take notes while the presentations are being shown. Second, they are written using the Beamer package of LaTeX, so the mathematics is presented in a professional manner. Third, they eliminate the need for an instructor to present tabulated data that is produced by the various approximations methods, which not only saves class time but permits the class to flow more smoothly.
The presentation material is being produced by Professor John Carroll of Dublin City University, and more presentations will be uploaded to this site as they become available. It coul dbe very helpful if you would let us know if you find this material useful.
Computer Algebra Systems
Many of us teaching numerical analysis in the past few years have found that students are increasingly using a computer algebra system to perform the required calculations. This permits them to see the effects of the individual steps of a method without having to perform time-consuming computations. We have adopted the computer algebra system Maple as our standard computation device because their latest versions include a NumericalAnalysis Subpackage under their Student Package. This subpackage closely follows the algorithms in our book, which makes the techniques easy to follow. However, any of the other computer algebra systems can easily be adapted for use with the book.
Programs for the Algorithms
In our earlier editions we included a CD with the book on which we placed programs for all the algorithms in the programming languages C, FORTRAN, and Pascal, as well as in worksheets for the computer algebra systems Maple, MATLAB, and Mathematica.
It is now more useful to have these programs included on this web site, where they can be downloaded as needed. This also permits us to update the programs when new releases of the software become available. We have additionally added Java programs to this collection. The link Numerical Analysis Programs provides the programs in the various formats and instructions for their implementation. Please observe that this material is copyrighted by the Publisher who grants the use to students and faculty at schools currently using the Ninth Edition of Numerical Analysis by Burden and Faires.
Student Solutions Manual and Study Guide
We have spent a great deal of time preparing the Student Solutions Manual and Study Guide to ensure that it is useful for students. The Guide illustrates in detail each of the major features of the exercises, and additionally provides proofs of many of the extensions to the methods in the text. We have added numerous solutions for this edition and expanded the explanation of many of the solutions that appear in earlier editions of the Guide. The cost of all text material has increased to the point that many students need to be sure of the usefulness of supplements before committing to a purchase. To help make this decision, the first two chapters of the Student Solutions Manual and Study Guide ( ISBN-10: 0-538-73563-5, ISBN-13: 978-0-538-73563-6) can be downloaded in PDF format. We hope that this inclusion will help students make a decision as to whether they should purchase the Guide. If the Guide is sufficiently useful, please contact the Publisher.
Users of the Book
Faculty are often interested in the knowing what other faculty think about a book they are considering adopting. In the past we have included on this site a recent adoption list for the book. The Publisher has informed us about schools that have used the Eighth Edition of Numerical Analysis. We hope this list is correct and apologize for any omissions. More important, we hope that there are no schools erroneously on this listing, but we have no reasonable way to determine this. In any case, we hope that there are sufficient schools on this list to permit a faculty member considering using the book can find someone who has experience with it.
The day after we sent the book in for printing we received two e-mails pointing out errors in our Eighth edition. Most of these had already been corrected, but there were a few that slipped past us again. We will correct them at the first opportunity, when there is a new printing. In the meantime, here is an eratta list for the first printing of the book.
Contact Information
If you have any comments about the current edition, or suggestions for a future edition, please contact us at burden@math.ysu.edu or at faires@math.ysu.edu. Our most valuable suggestions come from users of the book, many of whom are students, who contact us to tell what they like and how we can improve our presentation. We greatly appreciate all these contributions.