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Lecture Notes in Differential Equations - Bruce E. Shapiro

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Preface<br />

These lecture notes on differential equations are based on my experience<br />

teach<strong>in</strong>g Math 280 and Math 351 at California State University, Northridge<br />

s<strong>in</strong>ce 2000. The content of Math 280 is more applied (solv<strong>in</strong>g equations)<br />

and Math 351 is more theoretical (existence and uniqueness) but I have<br />

attempted to <strong>in</strong>tegrate the material together <strong>in</strong> the notes <strong>in</strong> a logical order<br />

and I select material from each section for each class.<br />

The subject matter is classical differential equations and many of the excit<strong>in</strong>g<br />

topics that could be covered <strong>in</strong> an <strong>in</strong>troductory class, such as nonl<strong>in</strong>ear<br />

systems analysis, bifurcations, chaos, delay equations, and difference equations<br />

are omitted <strong>in</strong> favor of provid<strong>in</strong>g a solid ground<strong>in</strong>g the basics.<br />

Some of the more theoretical sections have been marked with the traditional<br />

asterisk ∗ . You can’t possibly hope to cover everyth<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the notes <strong>in</strong> a<br />

s<strong>in</strong>gle semester. If you are us<strong>in</strong>g these notes <strong>in</strong> a class you should use them<br />

<strong>in</strong> conjunction with one of the standard textbooks (such as [2], [9] or [12] for<br />

all students <strong>in</strong> both 280 and 351, and by [5] or [11] for the more theoretical<br />

classes such as 351) s<strong>in</strong>ce the descriptions and justifications are necessarily<br />

brief, and there are no exercises.<br />

The current version has been typeset <strong>in</strong> L A TEX and many pieces of it were<br />

converted us<strong>in</strong>g file conversion software to convert earlier versions from<br />

various other formats. This may have <strong>in</strong>troduced as many errors as it<br />

saved <strong>in</strong> typ<strong>in</strong>g time. There are probably many more errors that haven’t<br />

yet been caught so please let me know about them as you f<strong>in</strong>d them.<br />

While this document is <strong>in</strong>tended for students <strong>in</strong> my classes at CSUN you<br />

are free to use it and distribute it under the terms of the Creative Commons<br />

Attribution – Non-commercial – No Derivative Works 3.0 United<br />

States license. If you discover any bugs please let me know. All feedback,<br />

comments, suggestions for improvement, etc., are appreciated, especially if<br />

you’ve used these notes for a class, either at CSUN or elsewhere, from both<br />

<strong>in</strong>structors and students.<br />

vii

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