This book outlines an elementary, one-semester course that exposes students to both the process of rigor, and the rewards inherent in taking an axiomatic approach to the study of functions of a real variable. The aim of a course in real analysis should be to challenge and improve mathematical intuition rather than to verify it. The philosophy of this book is to focus attention on questions which give analysis its inherent fascination.
This new edition is extensively revised and updated with a refocused layout. In addition to the inclusion of extra exercises, the quality and focus of the exercises in this book has improved, which will help motivate the reader. New features include a discussion of infinite products, and expanded sections on metric spaces, the Baire category theorem, multi-variable functions, and the Gamma function.
Reviews from the first edition:
"This is a dangerous book. Understanding Analysis is so well-written and the development of the theory so well-motivated that exposing students to it could well lead them to expect such excellence in all their textbooks. ... Understanding Analysis is perfectly titled; if your students read it that's what's going to happen. This terrific book will become the text of choice for the single-variable introductory analysis course; take a look at it next time you're preparing that class."
-Steve Kennedy, The Mathematical Association of America, 2001
"Each chapter begins with a discussion section and ends with an epilogue. The discussion serves to motivate the content of the chapter while the epilogue points tantalisingly to more advanced topics. ... I wish I had written this book The development of the subject follows the tried-and-true path, but the presentation is engaging and challenging. Abbott focuses attention immediately on the topics which make analysis fascinating ... and makes them accessible to an inexperienced audience."
-Scott Sciffer, The Australian Mathematical Society Gazette, 29:3, 2002
Description
This lively introductory text exposes the student to the rewards of a rigorous study of functions of a real variable. In each chapter, informal discussions of questions that give analysis its inherent fascination are followed by precise, but not overly formal, developments of the techniques needed to make sense of them. By focusing on the unifying themes of approximation and the resolution of paradoxes that arise in the transition from the finite to the infinite, the text turns what could be a daunting cascade of definitions and theorems into a coherent and engaging progression of ideas.
Acutely aware of the need for rigor, the student is much better prepared to understand what constitutes a proper mathematical proof and how to write one. Fifteen years of classroom experience with the first edition of Understanding Analysis have solidified and refined the central narrative of the second edition. Roughly 150 new exercises join a selection of the best exercises from the first edition, and three more project-style sections have been added.
Investigations of Euler's computation of (2), the Weierstrass Approximation Theorem, and the gamma function are now among the book's cohort of seminal results serving as motivation and payoff for the beginning student to master the methods of analysis.
