Very good textbook. Has some weak spots (a few sections were poorly explained), but overall the explanations were good, there were lots of examples, and lots of exercises with full solutions.

If you are a college professor looking to brush up, then it is fine, otherwise this book is terrible.

The book uses weird symbols than what I am used to. Hard language to understand. I wouldn't recommend it to another person. The book I recommend is Ordinary Differential Equations by Morris Tenenbaum and Harry Pollard. They use symbols we learned in college and don't throw you into a loop by saying " what did they mean by that?" Personally, I don't like someone stuffing something down people's throat without explaining in detail what they mean in plain terms. I found their language unfriendly.

This product wasn't the book I expected to buy, but it was better because it is the version that includes the 'Boundary value problems'. the book is very useful and I really like to look to it as a resource when studying or whatnot. I also bought the solutions manual, which helps sometimes, but it seems that the book itself is enough because the solutions in the back of the book are all there, even the even numbers! Great book! but, personally I bought this book because of school and the class that I am taking requires it!

The bookseller send me just a CD while I was expecting a book with CD. It is not mentioned anywhere that it would be just a CD not whole book. And if I asked for refund he is not willing to refund. He is here on Amazon.com to cheat people.

I'm definitely not a fan of this book, the example problems rarely correlate to the actual problems in the book (most people learn by example). As other people have said there are solutions in the back...well that's not true, there are only answers, solutions which are step by step cannot be found there or in the solutions manual! If you must use this book i would highly recommend checking out for free "Paul's Online Math Notes" which contains a much more lucid intro to this stuff.

Thought this was the book, and it was just a solutions manual CD...and it was a burned CD at that...Definately illegal.

I had to buy this book for my ODE class, and it may be the worst book I have had to buy yet.
First, the text is not very clear, and there are few examples. Methods for solving DEs are (sometimes) introduced in the problems, rather than in the text.
Second, the quality of the book is poor. I bought mine new, and there were ink splotches on several pages--not the quality I would expect from a $160 college textbook! Besides the splotches, the paper quality is poor as well. I also was bothered by having to tear the CD out, leaving a ripped page in the textbook. You can tear along the preforated edge, but this leaves a ridge in the pages that is most annoying.
The software that comes with is OK, but the videos seem like something from a 6th grade science show.

This book is a good book to introduce students to differential equations with applications. It also has a solutions manual so that students can check to see if their answers are correct. It may not be the perfect book, but overall it's a good book. I would actually recommend its use.

Ok, so I'm in the same boat as most of you here.
I hardly even opened this book when I first took a course in differential equations.

However, once I began taking higher level courses I found its introductory explanations of many forms of solutions (like Bessel Functions) to be useful. Although I don't believe it's worth using in a course in ordinary differential equations, it still makes an ok reference once you've mastered ODE's and periodically need refreshers on particular topics like Euler's equations excetera.

So my suggestion is if you're planning on taking a lot of math just bear with this book and master your prof's notes. If your professor gives nasty notes and you're not so great at math ... you might want to buy a cheap paperback backup book if you want to do well. People seem to enjoy Ordinary Differential Equations, I didn't buy it but a friend of mine did and it worked for him (of course he still needed help with some of the assignments).

Explanations are difficult to understand, and the example problems for each section are insufficient for demonstrating the topic. There are no solutions to the exercises in the back of the book, only answers. If you want to learn diff eq., I would recommend using Pauls Online Notes and your instructor's lectures. This book fails to teach students how to solve problems.

The examples in this book are both few and lacking. The text isn't too good at explaining procedures either. Easily the worst math text book I have used.

This book touches every subject and it does so focusing on the mathematical knowledge. This book's strong point is that it doesn't treat the reader as an idiot, as other DE books make a point of doing, but it also doesn't simply provide the method's and theorem's deductions. It's a good book that justifies it's place on any serious science and engineering student and professional.

Good book, and covers a well range. JustAsk is a feature they have for an extra cost. While I think it is better then the pearson prentice hall books and online content it still skips steps with eigen values and vectors.

The book tries to make things simple and fails miserably. The round-about explainations are confusing. The maladroit, verbose language obfuscates what they are trying to impart. (It's curious that the 5th edition I looked at is often clearer than this 8th edition, and it's shorter too.) What ahould be simple and direct is convolved (no pun intended) into meandering examples unworthy of the name, the point of which often a mystery even to those who are very experienced with ODEs, and obfuscatory verbosity. I'm baffled as to how they book's author (or anyone) thought this might be a useful style. If you are a Professor, then please be nice to the kids and don't use this. If you are a student, I strongly recommend you buy an additional textbook; it would amaze me to see anyone learn ODEs from this; it should be at least possible, albeit difficult, to learn the subject from a textbook alone.

I used this text in my ordinary differential equations class and found it to be very helpfull. This text had good coverage of material for an upper class undergraduate or first year graduate course. Each subject was introduced in a clear manner with a detailed outline of the derivation of the method being used. I had another text while I was taking this course and the authors of that text would give you a theorem and then the method or formula to solve your given problem with no connection between the two. This book was very best in allowing you to gain a deeper understanding of what you were doing. The authors did clearly state the theorems, but did lack in proof in most cases. They did gave an outline to proof most of the time, which was helpful in working my own proof. Overall this text is a good one and I would strongly recommend it.

Those of you that believe those 5 star reviews are true, forget it. After passing a course of differential equations throughout a grueling semester I can certainly attest to the latter.

This book has horrid if not completely non-existent examples and even the solutions manual is nearly worthless. If you've spent more than a semester without calculus you might as well forget trying to use this book in a formal course.

Perhaps if you're a "bright" student you could make use of this book, though still it is absolutely no testament to professional teaching methodology. If you intend to learn the subject for any moderate application, look elsewhere. This book has no practical application examples worth any salt. This book is not for engineers; most certainly it's best application being for theoretical mathematicians.

If your instructor requires this book, and you're an engineer, you'd better start hoping he's a darn good instructor.

If I didn't have better things to live for, I would dedicate my life to hating this book. It's TERRIBLE! Visual learners shudder and linguists are baffled left and right. The examples don't match up AT ALL with the exercises and the book is not succinct at all, whatsoever. There is no elegance. This book is a disservice to mathematics. PLEASE, if your instructor requires this book, CHANGE INSTRUCTORS.

I used this book in my Intro to Diff Eq class. Appreciation of this book requires a good understand of physics, which I, admittedly, do not have. The explanations are not always straightforward because they are bogged down in complicated proofs. Nothing is stated succinctly or summarized. My biggest issue with this text is that it lacks sufficient visualizations of ideas (charts, graphs, etc). I had to sketch the ideas as best as I understood them as I went through the material, a laborious process.

I used an earlier version of Boyce & DiPrima and hated it like most everyone else here. (Why is it that all the crappy textbooks live on, edition-after-edition, inflicted on a new batch of students year-after-year?) To get through my DE course I used the book by Dennis G. Zill. It was pretty good. Zill's book is still around. Comes in several different flavors.

For those looking for a better book than Boyce/Diprima I've listed all recent, introductory DE books I could find on amazon. FWIW they are:

"An Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations" by James C. Robinson (ISBN 0521533910). This provides a very gentle introduction. does not cover Laplace transforms.

Shepley L. Ross has 2 books: an intro book (Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations, 4th Edition ISBN: 978-0-471-09881-2) and a regular text (Differential Equations, 3rd Edition, ISBN: 978-0-471-03294-6) which have garnered good reviews.

Can also try "Elementary Differential Equations" by Kohler and Johnson.

Physical Science/Engineering/applications oriented:

2 books by John Polking (one on DEs and one on ODEs/BVPs)
Elementary Differential Equations by William Trench
Fundamentals of Differential Equations by Nagle, Saff & Snider
An Introduction to Differential Equations and Their Applications by Stanley J. Farlow (ISBN 048644595X). He's also got a PDE book.

For the engineers: you might want to skip a separate DE book altogether and get a combined book. Something like Linear Algebra and Differential Equations by Peterson and Sochacki

OR just get all of Ken Stroud's engineering math books:

"Engineering Mathematics" by K.A. Stroud, Dexter Booth
"Advanced Engineering Mathematics" by K.A. Stroud, Dexter Booth
"Differential Equations" by K.A. Stroud, Dexter Booth
"Vector Analysis" by K.A. Stroud, Dexter Booth
"Linear Algebra" by K.A. Stroud, Dexter Booth
"Complex Variables" by K.A. Stroud, Dexter Booth

other options: "Differential Equations Demystified" by Steven G. Krantz / "2500 Solved Problems in Differential Equations" (Schaum's Solved Problems Series) by Richard Bronson / The Differential Equations Problem Solver ISBN 0878915133


Two books that involve computer/numerical methods would be:

1. A Modern Introduction to Differential Equations by Henry Ricardo
2. Differential Equations: An Introduction to Modern Methods and Applications by James R. Brannan, William E. Boyce. Although, I'd be leery of any DE book with Boyce as an author.

Of course, Dover Publications has inexpensively reprinted boatloads of classic math books including these DE titles:

"Ordinary Differential Equations" by Morris Tenenbaum, Harry Pollard. (rated highly)

Plus in addition to the Farlow book they have:

An Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations by Earl A. Coddington
Introduction to Linear Algebra and Differential Equations by John W. Dettman
Differential Equations: A Concise Course by H. S. Bear

I used an earlier version of Boyce & DiPrima and hated it like most everyone else here. (Why is it that all the crappy textbooks live on, edition-after-edition, inflicted on a new batch of students year-after- year?) To get through my diff. eq. course I bought the book by Dennis G. Zill and used that. It was pretty good. Zill's book is still around. Comes in several different flavors.

Another suggestion is to look at the 2 books by Shepley L. Ross. He has an intro book on ODEs and regular text on diff. equations which have garnered good reviews.

Can also try the text by Kohler and Johnson.

I used an earlier version of Boyce & DiPrima and hated it like most everyone else here. To get through my diff. eq. course I bought the book by Dennis G. Zill and used that. It was pretty good. Zill's book is still around. Comes in several different flavors.

Another suggestion is to look at the 2 books by Shepley L. Ross. He has an intro book on ODEs and regular text on diff. equations which have garnered good reviews.

Can also try the text by Kohler and Johnson.

Why is it that all the crappy textbooks live on, edition after edition, inflicted on a new batch of students year after year while the good books struggle to find an audience?

I used an earlier version of Boyce & DiPrima and hated it like everyone else here. Interesting that its never been seriously revised through all these years. At the time, I bought the book by Dennis G. Zill and used that. It was pretty good. Zill's book is still around. Comes in several different flavors.

Another suggestion is to look at the books by Shepley L. Ross. He has an intro book on ODEs and regular text on Diff. Equations which have garnered good reviews.

This is my favorite ODE book. Ever. But I guess I'm in the minority on this. I owned the 5th edition. My ex owned the 7th edition. Her book was a bit more flashy -- fancy graphics and whatnot were sort of distracting, but all the things that I love about my copy were true (for me) about her copy.

I really like that they approach the subject via a wonderfully balanced viewpoint -- they do a tightrope walk of being rigorous and making the book useful for us physicists, and our cousins, the engineers.

They go through practical theory but leave out the more exotic elements of ODE theory.

I found the examples to be extremely sufficient. Sometimes generous. I can either assume that something awful happened to the 8th edition or that the other reviewers are the type of undergrads who think that a book should have so many examples worked out that if their hw problem isn't worked out for them, the book sucks.

If you really want a zillion examples worked out, I have one word for you: Schaum's. Read it. Love it.

This is a textbook. It presents theory, it gives a few examples, and you're left to practise applying the theory.

I found the text to be very well written. They're not verbose, but they're not terse either. Very nice balance. The explanations and insights are masterfully written.

Where the book really shines is that it's a practical "how to" book. They cram a lot of different techniques into a nice relatively lightweight book.

The section of PDEs is sufficient and appropriate for the intended level of reader.

I love their problem selection. In fact, what I love most about their problems is that they often have "teaching problems". You learn solution techniques through a series of well crafted end of the chapter exercises.

Personally, I think this is the single best undergrad ODE book on the market.

One of the many problems with this book is the order in which the topics are presented. Right off the bat, They decide to put linear equations ahead of all other types of DE's. Are they really as simple to solve as seperable equations? The entire second chapter is a complete mess and is very disorganized. The forumla for the integrating factor of linear equations is difficult to ascertain, and it is never clearly stated (it's there, but their notation is convoluted). I don't want to sound like someone who is just having difficulty with the math taking it out on the innocent textbook.

I have consulted other textbooks on the topic, and I have to say that I really like Zill's DE's for the logical way in which it is organized, and
Kohler and Johnson's text for its clear explanations. My professor actually commented on how bad this book is. All DE textbooks are NOT created equally, and if you are struggling through this one, try finding older editions of those other two from your University's library.

I think this book is the best among the standard "undergraduate" textbooks for diffeq--i.e., the ones with flashy colorful covers that are re-released in a new edition way too often.

This book is a little bit more systematic than most...it's easier to sort out the logical dependency of the material, and as a result it makes an excellent reference. Another strong point of this book is that it goes a little bit farther than most similar books--you will probably want to hold onto this one and use it in a second course, even if another book is used.

In my opinion though, the best introductory books on differential equations are from the Springer Verlag yellow book series...check out the ones by Braun or Hubbard; they have more discussion and are more of learning texts than this one. I also think it's a total scam the way they keep releasing new editions of this book--not much changes. I've used the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth editions and I'd recommend any of them; nowadays the eighth edition should be sufficiently cheap to buy for next-to-nothing...

If you want to learn some basic techniques for solving differential equations, this book is as good as any. It has a large number of worked examples, countless problems, and the solutions to every problem are in the back (not just the odd ones). For the most part, the explanations are clear and precise, and it also has some useful graphics.

However, the theoretical treatment of differential equations is lacking. Many of the theorems are stated without proof, or the proof is just sketched. For example, in the second chapter, they begin to explain the proof of the existence and uniqueness theorem for initial value problems of first order differential equations, by constructing a sequence of integrals, however, they do not tell us how or why the sequence converges, let alone explain with delta-epsilon rigor.

I am also not terribly thrilled with the presentation of the Laplace transform, which for the most part, is left as something of a mystery. In my opinion, Laplace transforms should be left off until a later course in complex analysis. It will be much easier, and take much less energy to invert Laplace transform once one has learn how to calculate residues.

In summation, this book is good if you are looking to do plug-and-chug mathematics. However, if you are interestied in the real theory behind it, either for the purpose of further study in pure mathematics, or for more advanced applications, this is probably not the best book for you.

A further note: this book makes a big deal about using computers to model differential equations. They even include a software package for this purpose. However, my class did not use it at all, and I have not expended the effort to check it out myself, so I cannot vouch for the quality or utility of the technological aspects of the book.

Sometimes this book, like all books at this high of level, can be a bit convoluted. In the authors attempt to stay professional at all times they rarely explain things in a way that is understandable to an everyman. However with a decent instructor this book should be fine. The homework sets at the end of sections are good as they range from quite easy to, in some cases, mind-blowingly difficult. As I understand it, this book is very popular in Diff EQ classes, and for good reason.

I as able to easily and quickly buy the text books for my undergraduate math class.

It was shipped on time, and the book was recieved in perfect condition, and it was the correct edition.

Pity the student using this textbook for a Differential Equations course. The Boyce & DiPrima text is unduly cumbersome with lacking explanation and poorly choosen examples throughout.

Many problems given in the text are tedious, and are indicated as being "technologically intensive." This is fine: in today's workplace, one can anticipate using a computer to solve problems. Unfortunately, none of my math professors will let me bring out my laptop on an exam. In some of the chapters, almost every problem is indicated as being "technologically intensive." If the computer-oriented problems weren't bad enough, the examples in the text are. Most of these are sorely unclear. I think that Boyce & DiPrima must have been writing in Fermat's marginal notes style when composing this text. Many times the omitted steps (which the authors sometimes regard as "it is clear that") require substantial algebraic and calculus manipulation to achieve the indicated results. Certainly I have no qualms about a text leaving out algebraic or even trigonometric simplifications, but what's left out of the Boyce & DiPrima examples is truely excessive. Worse, still, the examples are often very generic to a single type of problem. Thus, while one type of problem in the exercises might have good examples to instruct students on how to achieve solutions, the rest of the exercises often lack example altogether. Explanation and orientation to applied math is poor. The authors jump suddenly from a confusing theory discourse to an application without bridging the two. Many times I was left puzzled by how the text was proceeding. Still many more times I set the book aside in frustration.

This book does, however, have redeeming values. I like how all of the problems have their solutions provided in the back. If only other math textbook authors took the hint: students won't know how well they're doing if they cannot confirm their results! Also, the included software is good. I found it easy to use and helpful for the computing problems. I wish, however, more attention was given to this software in the text (like small projects using the software with each chapter). These benefits unfortunately do not overcome the tremendous flaws with the Boyce & DiPrima text.

Overall, this is one of the worst math books I have encountered. Rife with poor explanation, a confusing style, and poor exercise sets, the Boyce and DiPrima textbook is bound to cause grief for most students. The student's solution manual is helpful, but offers only little more explanation than the textbook. If you are hapless enough to have this text as a course requirement, I recommend that you either swap classes to try and get a course with a different book - or - be prepared to spend many long hours with tutors or your professor.

Good luck.

[...]

This text is definitely for advanced math students. On the exciting scale, this text would rank with most others. The text is written fairly competently and is easy to follow given a introductory background in math (Calc I & II). I've found much of the material interesting (for it being math) and have actually enjoyed doing the reading assignment for my class (Introduction to Differential Equations).

This book is about average to good quality for students to understand the concepts of differential equations. However, there are many problems to solve with answers at the back of the book so, with a good professor, you can master the material.

This is a good book on ordinary differential equations. Examples are very helpful to learn how to do problems. They are pretty much the best way to learn how to solve the equations. Also, there are answers to every problem in the textbook, so you can check your answer. However this book has some nuances which you should consider: Main important points on how to solve ODEs are not highlighted (only some are, and those are mostly the theorems). The important stuff IS in the chapters, but you gotta pick it out for yourself. For that reason I recommend getting some used ODE book for cheap, that has all the important concepts highlighted (Edwards/Penney comes to mind).

I personally liked this book. It's easy to read and study on your own without the aid of a teacher. Its weakness is perhaps the lack of demonstrations, but since I'm a physics major I wasn't extremely concerned with them.

This is as good as any book gets on this subject. I suggest you keep another book as backup for extra problems for you to work your way through. The explanations here are excellent, its just that there are too few solved examples to drill the idea into your head. But as far as understanding concepts goes, this is THE book on ODEs. Go for it!

It is interesting that the reviews of this book are so polarized, probably a result of different ways of conceptualizing math. I lean very much towards spatial (three dimensional)thinking, and this book has proven utterly worthless to me.

This is unfortunate, because most aspiring engineerers think spatially, and most are required to take a differential equations course.

My specific complaints are numerous:

1) Far too few examples
2) Exremely disorganized (examples in the book will reference a formula, concept or previous example in previous sections rather than restating the problem. I spend a lot of time flipping pages back and forth, which significantly interferes with my train of thought.)
3) Essential components of an example will be presented in paragraph form, but the reader would be much better served by presenting the information in a table or at least using a block quotation.
4) The answers in the back of the book are regulary presented in an unusual form that requires unnecessary algebraic manipulation.
5) The language is unnecessarily theoretical.
6) The examples don't really present a step-by-step method for solving a problem, but devolve into further abstraction.
7) Further discussion of essential subject matter is presented in the problems section rather than in the heart of the chapter.

If you find yourself asking the questions, "What purpose does this technique serve? Why do we need to know this? How will this help me solve a problem in the real world? or Will you draw a picture of that?" then this book is likely of little value.

And if you have a bad teacher, you may just be sunk. I just bought REA's Differential Equation Problem Solver and Tennenbaum's "Ordinary Differential Equations". I hope it helps.

I'm a student that reads all my text books and relies heavy on them. This book starts off doing a great job on first order differential equations. However, as the book move on it falls short on examples,and doing a poor job explaining more advance topics. I had real trouble with the applied sections on secound order non-homogeneus equations. I have read the older additions of this book and think they were much better. Sorry !!!!!

I used this as an introduction to linear systems and laplace transforms and fourier series. Although, i feel that there should have been more examples to better illustrate the theory behind fourier series and PDE problems. But it defintely introduced these new topics quite well in terms of theorems and explanations.
I enjoyed the material on power series since I did not get a proper introduction to series at college and it is very interesting. you will defintely enjoy it if ur rreally a math oriented person.

Not too good... there weren't enough examples as others said, and some of the derivations were unnecessarily complicated. Try the book by Rainville & Bedient instead, if it's still in print.

This book has basically everything for a full-year course, and it is explained pretty clearly. LOTS of solutions to problems are in the back, which was very helpful. The problems I had with the book include that many things took more space and time than needed and many times better examples could have been used, but if you don't mind reading a lot, this is a pretty good book.