2

So I'm reading Visual Complex Analysis by Tristan Needham. It's a beautiful book that's not very hard to understand at all; however, I just don't know if I have sufficiently learned what I'm supposed to learn. Hell, sometimes I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to take away from it. In my humble opinion, the exercises do not, a lot of times, test my knowledge. At least not directly.

I think this is happening because all the books I've read so far had: a summary, an objective list for each chapter and section, and exercises dedicated to each section that are very straight forward. I'm trying to find ways to do it on my own, like sketching transformations, finding geometry proofs to do using complex numbers, etc...

Still I feel that a lot of times what I've learned won't stay in my long term memory since it wasn't solidified by exercises and problems.

PS: I have nothing against the exercises in the book, because just like the author stated, they're very interesting and fun to do.

hjhjhj57
  • 4,125
Jean
  • 395
  • I could think of two things: $(i)$ Study the same topics in a 'normal' complex analysis book to see if the insight from Needham's book matches your understanding of the formal proofs and assertions. $(ii)$ Solve exercises from other books. – hjhjhj57 Jul 06 '15 at 16:38
  • Firstly thanks for adding that other tag. Secondly, what book/s do you recommend? @hjhjhj57 – Jean Jul 06 '15 at 16:42
  • 1
    I used Markushevich's for my first complex analysis course and I really liked it. I think Ahlfors' is also a pretty standard book, but here you can find a lot more: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/30749/what-is-a-good-complex-analysis-textbook – hjhjhj57 Jul 06 '15 at 16:44
  • 1
    I've been simultaneously studying out Needham's "Visual Complex Analysis" and Polya/Latta's "Complex Variables". The latter is a very good book for a more algebraic and rigorous approach to supplement the intuitive, visual approach of VCA – JacksonFitzsimmons Jul 07 '15 at 04:48

0 Answers0