What's "Advanced Math for Engineers"?

Question

Is "Advanced Math for Engineers" a course taken after Differential Equations for engineering students at college? What does this course cover? Is it useful for computer programmers? Can someone recommend me a good textbook for it?

Answer 1

Advanced Math for Engineers or Advanced Engineering Maths is usually taken after all other math classes.  You take the whole calculus sequence, diffy-Qs,  what ever else and then take advanced math.  It is a survey course.

It can cover a number of different topics so you have exposure to all the other maths you might encounter that were not covered in the core courses.  Some of the topics are less advanced than the core courses, others are more, but you need exposure to it all.  Topics might include, probabilities, statistics, eigenvalues, financial math and time value of money (i.e. is your project worth it), graph theory, failure analysis math, ODEs, partial Diffy Qs, linear algebra, vector calculus, Boolean algebra, logic, complex analysis, Fourier, LaPlace, and Z transforms, divergence and curl, linear programming, data analysis, ....  and so on.

 

It is different at different colleges and in different major course sequences.

It will not necessarily include all the topic from one text - it may include only some of them or might have other material supplemented.  It includes the things the core courses have not covered that the school or department deems important for you to get, to some degree.

 

Useful?  For a person who is going to strictly be a programmer and not do engineering?

Some of the topics in data analysis, linear programming, ...  will be.

Depending on what programming you will be doing - say Games with multiple vector spaces overlapping, rotation of objects, scaling - it may be useful to understand the maths behind the vector calculus.

Boolean algebra (and, or, if, then else) understanding the maths behind the logical structure of a program may be useful.

With the advance things that are showing up on my cell phone - gps triangulation, complex financial tools, solving integrals on my phone, Wolfram alpha, all those google tools - I say if you want to be able to do and understand very complex things it could be useful to know the maths underneath.  It you want to be the best, high powered one on the staff, or just a programmer.

- I always think all knowledge is useful.  But that's me.

 

I can recommend, Erwin Kreyszig's  Advanced Engineering Mathematics, 10th Edition, Wiley & sons.

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-EHEP001850.html

 

If you want a pdf go here:

http://faculties.sbu.ac.ir/~sadough/pdf/Advanced Engineering Mathematics 10th Edition.pdf

 

Put Advance Engineering Mathematics into google for much more.