I'm a Mechanical Engineer and I wanted to deeper understand some aspects related to differential equations.
Sometimes, when one finishes University, he knows many concepts about mathematical topics, but without having a clear idea about their real meaning and their different ways to be used. Every time, if one does not have a strong knowledge about Mathematic tools, he cannot apply and completely exploit their power.
This book is surely helpfull in clarifying many things related to Differential Partial Equations, which are one of the most usefull tool in modern Engineering, nowadays.
The method of this book (divided in several chapters which represent a single lesson each)is clear and not boring to read (as many Mathematic books are).
I would suggest this book to people who want to clarify the real meaning of PDEs.

I teach BVPs at the undergraduate level and I use this text for classroom examples. It presents classical methods for solution of BVPs. Mathematics is provided at the application level so this not a reference for someone interested in the mathematics of PDEs. It does provide references (dated) that I have found useful for additional material. Most are inexpensive so you can add them to your library. Will DOVER consent to placing all of its texts in KINDLE format?

This is a series of lectures that introduce partial differential equations for engineers and scientists. It is written clearly and carefully, using approachable language to build a conceptual understanding of the phsyical phenomena that inspire the mathematical approach.

This probably won't satisfy people interested in applied mathematics, but engineers should find this a sensible approach. I'd suggest that this could be read alongside an advanced mathematics textbook and will aid the understanding, application and solving of many vital applied physics problems.

Good book to gain an understanding of the basics involved in PDE's. Could use more worked through examples as applied to practical problems.

If you want to teach yourself PDE's, then this is certainly a great, and affordable book to get started with. As other reviewers have said, the book could certainly go into more depth, but there is no one book that can completely teach you one subject. My advice would definitely be to use this book to get started, and to use other books to go further.

The book is simple, interesting to read, just like a story book or a news article, and can be used as an introductory textbook for PDEs.

This is a great book for PDE I use it a lot in my school and in my job.

This book is an ideal companion for a graduate, or undergraduate, course in partial differential equations. There are worked examples and very useful definitions throughout the text. Additionally, the text is written as lessons and any lesson can be read and understood without reading the previous lessons. The best part is that this book is an order of magnitude cheaper than most college level texts and is largely more valuable.

This book is by far one of the most understandable and concise texts in pde's that I have ever seen, the purpose of the book is for engineers and physics students that want to understand the applications. The book is broken down to 47 lessons that can be read in about an hour or so per lesson. The author also gives very useful references for more advanced study. I recommend this text for anyone that has to take an engineering or physics pde course.
I have been a full time university math tutor for the past 13 years and I strongly recommend this text for any applied science student.The treatment of non-homogenous pde's and applications of fourier transforms to pde's is very unique. This book also does an excellent job of going over numerical techniques of solving heat equation, wave equation and laplace equation.

this book tries to cover a lot of material by briefly explaining each topic. bad idea mr. farlow! whatever happened to quality over quantity? even if you are looking for a summary of different ways of solving pdes, this is not the book to buy. plus the practice problems at the end of each chapter stink. even if you attempt to solve them, the answers in the back of the book are about 40% wrong.

also note that in the back of the book there is a "pde crossword puzzle". what is up with that? are we to expect that mr. farlow assumes the student using this book will be so bored with the material that they need a crossword puzzle to escape the pains of learning pdes?

if anything it does have a nice set of fourier transform tables in the back of the book, but this kind of thing can be easily found elsewhere.

This book is very good book as an elementary book on PDEs. Author discusses how to solve hyperbolic (in single degree) and parabolic equations and elliptic elementary problems.

Hyperbolic problems given in this book are elementary problems but, it's a good start for 1-D problems.To have a better understanding, better study C. Zachmanoglou's book on hyperbolic PDEs. But this book lays basic foundation which can be used as a launching pad. Examples are good enough for one to understand the methodology of solving problems.

This book doesn't discuss solving system of PDEs. You have to search elsewhere for the treatment.

This book is very good book as an elementary book on PDEs. Author discusses how to solve hyperbolic (in single degree) and parabolic equations and elliptic elementary problems.

Hyperbolic problems given in this book are elementary problems but, it's a good start for 1-D problems.To have a better understanding, better study C. Zachmanoglou's book on hyperbolic PDEs. But this book lays basic foundation which can be used as a launching pad. Examples are good enough for one to understand the methodology of solving problems.

This book doesn't discuss solving system of PDEs. You have to search elsewhere for the treatment.

This is a very good book for anyone who already has a basic understanding of PDE`s. It gives a good overview of the methods used for solving PDE`s, however there is not really enough information to tackle anything but the simplest of PDE`s.

This is a very well written textbook. However, it would help if you have some background in Fourier series and DFS (Discrete Fourier Series). It is important that you understand that in a linear system you can use superposition. These are linear differential equations that are talked about in this book so the idea of superposition is used a great deal in the process of solving PDE's. This is not really explained forcefully enough in the text. If you have these as background the text should be a breeze. I really like the idea of 47 short lessons. He is right. You can do about one lesson a day. Therefore, you should be able to finish the entire book in about 47 days. I have found that most math textbooks are written in a puzzle format so that you must have a paper and pencil handy to figure out exactly what the author is saying. While this is still true of this textbook, in most lessons the author works through a specific example instead of giving general equations like many math texts do. In one lesson, the solution is found graphically. It took me a while to understand what he was trying to do. The first 300 pages of the book are on analytical solutions and then the rest of the book is on numerical solutions. He also has a chapter on the benefits of each method, analytical versus numerical. I think the numerical methods are more useful as they are more general, and will solve more types of PDE's. I really studied this book as background for a book on the finite element method and I believe I accomplished what I wanted.

The book is laid out into convenient, bite sized lessons. If you're a busy person, it's easy to quickly pop one of the short lessons and do the questions in the end in any short windows you have. As for the complaints of simple exercises, they are meant to solidify the reader's knowledge by allowing him/her to apply what was learned and are representative of the entire lesson; they are not intended to pose a great challenge. This book flows well and introduces a wide gamut of techniques in an easy format.

This is an excellent book for the beginning engineer/scientist as well as the more experienced technical person. I will use this as a reference in the class I teach on Mathematical Methods for Electromagnetic Theory.

The Book has easy to read sections. What I like about the book most is that it quizzes you after each important subject is read.

The section on Monte Carlo methods alone is worth the price of this book...much better explanation than in Hamming's "Advanced Calculus". Highly recommend this readable and engaging book.

I teach an intro course in PDE regularly and, although I don't use this as the main textbook, it is required reading for the course. Given its approach, its mathematical rigor is not quite right for the course that I teach, and it could use more interesting exercises. That said, it is indispensable for its physical and visual insights. It's brief and to-the-point and a cursory reading gives a wonderful introduction to the various topics and ideas of PDEs. The book is well written, and the informal writing matches the approach. And - the price is right!

I can't say it presented much detail. Lots of derivation was missing and sometime it just seem like they're not adding enough-For example, the section on Duhamel's Principle was lacking. Though it does a good job on explaining how this principle can make some problem much easier to solve, it does not have enough examples to fully understand. Also, like most reviewrs pointed out, there's not enough problems~Usually four or five problems on each section. Lastly, beware of the several mistakes on the answer on the back of the book. My professor had to give us several of the correct solutions. Overall, its a good book for engineering major, and for those who just been introduce to partial differential equation. However, its so much of a "cook book" that I'm not sure whether anyone can really understand.

I can't say it presented much detail. Lots of derivation was missing and sometime it just seem like they're not adding enough-For example, the section on Duhamel's Principle was lacking. Though it does a good job on explaining how this principle can make some porblem much easier to solve, it does not have enough exmple to fully understand. Overall, its a good book for engineering major, and for those who just been introdce to partial differnetial equation. However, its so much of a "cook book" that I'm not sure whether anyone can really understand.

This is a survey sort of book, very systematic and logical, darn well written; concise, yet clear. Every chapter ends with a commented bibliography for those who want to wade into a particular kind of PDEs in greater depth. I personally couldn't put this book down, it's just exactly what I needed, and exactly the kind of book that I like -- presenting a sensible overview of the area yet not skipping on details. Did I mention it's well written?

Thumbs up; recommended.

The last time I studied PDE was 7 years ago. I perceived it then as a hard subject to comprehend because of the unsightly series, symbols, subscripts ...etc. I never thought I would come across a well-organized and easy-to-follow book like Farlow's.
This book is very well-organized and class-notes oriented. It has 47 lessons. Each lesson takes about 4 pages and has a clear well-stated objective with no subtitles and misleading branching. I highly recommend this book; it is so helpful especially if you want to self-study PDE.

I used this book in an undergraduate course, and since I couldn't see the board during lectures, I relied on only the book and it was very easy to read and understand. The major drawback of this book, and I don't know if this accounts for it's abnormally low price, is that there seem to be far more errors in the solutions than most books have. About 100 pages into the book, I had encountered so many errors, that thereafter whenever my solutions were different from the solutions in the book, I wondered first if the book was wrong, not if I had done something wrong.

I'm usually unimpressed by math textbooks. There typically seems to be a lot of intimidating notation that is not well explained. Typically, it seems that the author is trying to convey self-importance by making his or her subject of expertise appear rather intractable to mere mortals.

This book is a rare exception. It is light and easy to read - I wanted to learn a little bit about PDEs without having to take a formal course in them, and this book has been a great introduction. It has lots of applications and examples that really drive home the lessons. The organization is very good; it is broken down into many small chapters. I highly recommend it.

Unbeatable as far as breadth. Covers a lot of ground, conceptually it's extremely well organized, and the explanations are very easy to follow. This text is ideal for self-study.

The two major shortcomings are (1) slight lack of depth and (2) the exercises, which are far too few and far too simple.

As the title implies, this book is not intended to mathematicians, although it could finely serve as additional text for them, too. On the other hand it is excellent as an itroductory overview of the types of PDE's met and the methods used for their solution. There are references to more advanced texts for the interested, excercises in each chapter and, most importantly, nice, qualitative remarks on the properties of mathematical tools (like Fourier and Laplace transform) which help the reader to comprehend them.

The strength of this book is its organization. It is all you need to understand and use PDEs. Dont waste your money on other books. This is the best intro there is...