Book Recommendation For Ordinary Differential Equation.

Question

I am doing my first course in Differential Equations and the book the instructor is teaching from is Arnold's Ordinary Differential Equations.

I like the geometric approach taken in the book but I don't like the way the material has been presented.

Can somebody please suggest me another introductory text on ordinary differential equations which takes a geometric approach?

Answer 1

For my ODEs course, I used Differential Equations with Boundary-Value Problems by Dennis G. Zill and Warren S. Wright. The text inside is very good and clear. The material covered is vast and complete. The approach is not fundamentally geometric, but there is geometric interpretation in the explanations and many figures.

Here is a link to see what the book looks like: http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Equations-Boundary-Value-Textbooks-Available/dp/1111827060

Answer 2

You can try the book by Chicone, it is quite geometric and covers a whole lot of territory. I was a teaching assistant for a course based on this book.

That said, Arnold's book is a classic, and you might try reading this with that.