Course Title: Ordinary Differential Equations
Course Number: MATH 5410 - 1
Instructor: Andrejs Treibergs
Home Page: http://www.math.utah.edu/~treiberg/M5410.html
Place & Time: M, T, W, F, 2:00 - 2:50 in LS 101
Office Hours: 10:40-11:30 M, W, F, in JWB 224 (tent.)
E-mail:
Prerequisites: Math 2250 or 2280 or consent of instructor.
Main Text: Morris Hirsch, Stephen Smale & Robert Devaney, Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, and an Introduction to Chaos, 3rd. ed., Academic Press, 2013
ISBN 978-0-12-382010-5


We shall basically follow the text. But much of the material is standard and widely available. Therefore, students might be able to get by without owning the text, although the majority of the problems will come from the text. I'll provide references and put copies in the math library. Come to class for details and references. Here is a partial list of alternative sources that cover the material.

This is my fourth time teaching Math 5410. I was satisfied with the course text recommended Prof. Elena Cherkaev. Other possible texts are Bauer & Nohel and M. Taylor.

I have also taught Math 6410 several times and have tried various texts: Amann, Barriera & Valls, Chicone, Cronin, Liu, Perko, Sideris and Teschl. Perhaps not so unexpectedly, the texts the students liked the best, Perko and Liu, are not the ones I liked the best, Amann and Chicone and Sideris. None of the texts perfectly covered the syllabus of math 6410. Grant's notes as far as they go are modeled on the course he took as a graduate student here at Utah. All the texts cover about two thirds of the course, and the rest has to be supplemented. The authors all have their hobby horses, and they discuss their favorite special topics beyond what would be appropriate for a beginning course.

A second semester of ordinary differential equations, Math 5420, is rarely offered. But a companion course also dealing mostly with differential equations, Chaos Theory Math 5470, is offered in the spring, often using the text of Strogatz. It covers many applications using the theory from Math 5410 but does not provide proofs. The two courses usually have disjoint audiences, with Chaos Theory attracting students with majors other than math. An alternative text for Math 5470 may be Robinson.

This course is designed to be a balance of application and theory that is optimized for the needs of students at Utah, be they interested is applied mathematics, mathematical biology, numerical analysis, probability, differential equations or geometric analysis. As mathematicians, it is our prerogative and, indeed duty, to understand why theorems work, so that we may modify or code them as we encounter them in the future.

Texts Suitable for an Undergraduate Course in ODE's.

Texts Suitable for a Graduate Course for Students who have not Studied Measure Theory.

Texts Suitable for a Graduate Course for Students who have Studied Measure Theory.

Specialist's Books on Specific Topics. Unsuitable for Math 6410.

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Last updated: 6 - 29 - 17