This book provides a conceptual introduction to the theory of ordinary differential equations, concentrating on the initial value problem for equations of evolution and with applications to the calculus of variations and classical mechanics, along with a discussion of chaos theory and ecological models. It has a unified and visual introduction to the theory of numerical methods and a novel approach to the analysis of errors and stability of various numerical solution algorithms based on carefully chosen model problems. While the book would be suitable as a textbook for an undergraduate or elementary graduate course in ordinary differential equations, the authors have designed the text also to be useful for motivated students wishing to learn the material on their own or desiring to supplement an ODE textbook being used in a course they are taking with a text offering a more conceptual approach to the subject.
Sheldon Katz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.
* Warming up to enumerative geometry * Enumerative geometry in the projective plane * Stable maps and enumerative geometry * Crash course in topology and manifolds * Crash course in C∞ manifolds and cohomology * Cellular decompositions and line bundles * Enumerative geometry of lines * Excess intersection * Rational curves on the quintic threefold * Mechanics Introduction to supersymmetry * Introduction to string theory * Topological quantum field theory * Quantum cohomology and enumerative geometry * Bibliography * Index