Multivariable Analysis

Multivariable analysis is an important subject for mathematicians, both pure and applied. Apart from mathematicians, we expect that physicists, mechanical engi­ neers, electrical engineers, systems engineers, mathematical biologists, mathemati­ cal economists, and statisticians engaged in multivariate analysis will find this book extremely useful. The material presented in this work is fundamental for studies in differential geometry and for analysis in N dimensions and on manifolds. It is also of interest to anyone working in the areas of general relativity, dynamical systems, fluid mechanics, electromagnetic phenomena, plasma dynamics, control theory, and optimization, to name only several. An earlier work entitled An Introduction to Analysis: from Number to Integral by Jan and Piotr Mikusinski was devoted to analyzing functions of a single variable. As indicated by the title, this present book concentrates on multivariable analysis and is completely self-contained. Our motivation and approach to this useful subject are discussed below. A careful study of analysis is difficult enough for the average student; that of multi variable analysis is an even greater challenge. Somehow the intuitions that served so well in dimension I grow weak, even useless, as one moves into the alien territory of dimension N. Worse yet, the very useful machinery of differential forms on manifolds presents particular difficulties; as one reviewer noted, it seems as though the more precisely one presents this machinery, the harder it is to understand.

Multivariable analysis is an important subject for mathematicians, both pure and applied. Apart from mathematicians, we expect that physicists, mechanical engi­ neers, electrical engineers, systems engineers, mathematical biologists, mathemati­ cal economists, and statisticians engaged in multivariate analysis will find this book extremely useful. The material presented in this work is fundamental for studies in differential geometry and for analysis in N dimensions and on manifolds. It is also of interest to anyone working in the areas of general relativity, dynamical systems, fluid mechanics, electromagnetic phenomena, plasma dynamics, control theory, and optimization, to name only several. An earlier work entitled An Introduction to Analysis: from Number to Integral by Jan and Piotr Mikusinski was devoted to analyzing functions of a single variable. As indicated by the title, this present book concentrates on multivariable analysis and is completely self-contained. Our motivation and approach to this useful subject are discussed below. A careful study of analysis is difficult enough for the average student; that of multi variable analysis is an even greater challenge. Somehow the intuitions that served so well in dimension I grow weak, even useless, as one moves into the alien territory of dimension N. Worse yet, the very useful machinery of differential forms on manifolds presents particular difficulties; as one reviewer noted, it seems as though the more precisely one presents this machinery, the harder it is to understand.

The text is designed for use in a forty-lecture introductory course covering linear algebra, multivariable differential calculus, and an introduction to real analysis.
The core material of the book is arranged to allow for the main introductory material on linear algebra, including basic vector space theory in Euclidean space and the initial theory of matrices and linear systems, to be covered in the first ten or eleven lectures, followed by a similar number of lectures on basic multivariable analysis, including first theorems on differentiable functions on domains in Euclidean space and a brief introduction to submanifolds. The book then concludes with further essential linear algebra, including the theory of determinants, eigenvalues, and the spectral theorem for real symmetric matrices, and further multivariable analysis, including the contraction mapping principle and the inverse and implicit function theorems. There is also an appendix which provides a nine-lecture introduction to real analysis. There are various ways in which the additional material in the appendix could be integrated into a course–for example in the Stanford Mathematics honors program, run as a four-lecture per week program in the Autumn Quarter each year, the first six lectures of the nine-lecture appendix are presented at the rate of one lecture per week in weeks two through seven of the quarter, with the remaining three lectures per week during those weeks being devoted to the main chapters of the text.