The Atlas is a glorious book with formulas and beautiful plots of many functions. The interrelationships between the functions, calculus operations, limits, and several computational strategies are explained for each function. There is mention of history as well. The functions covered start with the most basic algebraic functions (which are more interesting than you might think) through trigonometric and Bessel functions to hypergeometric functions and elliptic integrals.

The Equator software - tough lacking graphics - will generate tables of function vales for direct use or for testing. The copy on the disk did not work on Windows 7 but the authors were very responsive in getting me a pointer to a newer version. I came to them with a bug and they fixed it in two days!

An arcane book for mathophiles, a one stop source for the mathematical functions found across a span of math.

The depth of knowledge shown by the authors who emphasize computation of functions is amazing. By presenting their coded functions in concise and easy-to-understand English, as opposed to Pascal, GAT, Basic, Focal, Forth, Fortran, C, Macsyma, or IDL - to name a few I have had to learn - anyone can easily code programs in their favorite language for many decades.

This extensive working reference is as essential as Abramowitz and Stegun and much more illuminating. In case of difficulty, one should find this reference book indispensable.

I am very happy with this book. It is a reference. It has nice pictures, nice paper, nice binding. The content is well presented and simple. I would recommend this book to anyone who needs a reference for some of the basic special functions used in science and engineering applications today.

It is great. I have to brush up to use it.

DR. M. SHAKIL, Ph.D.

Review of An Atlas of Functions, 2nd ed., Springer 2009, by Oldham, Myland, and Spanier

The second edition of the Atlas of Functions by Oldham and Spanier is a delightful reference work, full of information, and illuminated with beautiful graphics. Oldham, a chemist, and Spanier, a mathematician, had earlier cooperated on a book on Fractional Calculus (1974), which is now a classic, and was reprinted by Dover in 2006.

For this second edition of their 1987 Atlas of Functions, Oldham and Spanier got a third author, Jan Myland, who developed an accompanying, sophisticated software package, Equator, which effortlessly generates and displays numerical values for more than 200 mathematical functions, typically with 14-decimal precision. (Readers familiar with the often substandard precision of Excel's math functions may be surprised to learn that these are computed with Visual Basic - if that can be done by a single chemist, why can't Microsoft do it?) Incidentally, Equator is on a CD that comes with the Atlas, but can also be bought separately from Amazon, and is well worth its price. It can provide single values or a table of values for a given series of parameter values, which you can then copy to the computer clipboard for subsequent use in your own computations, or for graphing, printing, etc. No more need to interpolate either: you specify the parameters!

Relieved by Equator from the need to tabulate numerical functions, or to offer pseudo-code, this second edition of the Atlas of Functions, in 64 well-organized chapters, gives detailed, systematically organized overviews of the properties of each function, often illustrated with full-color graphics. There are also some interesting asides, such as on Laplace transformation or on statistical distributions. It is a worthy, highly readable successor to Abramowitz & Stegun's 1964 Handbook of Mathematical Functions (also a Dover book) and, in my opinion, vastly superior to the recent NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions, edited by Olver, Lozier, Boisvert, and Clark, which lacks a unified approach as well as printed or digitally available tables of numerical values of the functions described. Even if you write your own routines, it is useful to have some calibration data.

I most highly recommend An Atlas of Functions to any scientist or engineer who needs a reliable, well-organized and highly informative guide to mathematical functions. Moreover, all science libraries should have it on their reference shelves.

I got a brand new copy of this, with prime fulfillment, for $30! Although NIST is the standard "encyclopedia" of special functions, this amazing reference is much more pedagogic, taking you through all the steps for each family of function, and even explaining those odd exponential polynomial critters such as e^(whole poly)!

I'm a programmer and disagree slightly with reviews that don't like pseudocode. Pseudo is intended to be independent of any particular language, and I've found that only slightly modifying the pseudos given here for (the free) GNU Octave command line works incredibly well! I'm guessing the authors tried them on MatLab, as Octave is now nearly a free clone of that expensive program. I agree with the reviewer who suggests you key in the formula, but the pseudo gives the transition commands in a generic fashion-- they work just fine when combining the function's formula with the pseudo in Python's math library, for example, as long as you have even a little object experience.

This is a real hidden gem, and if you're doing any advanced math that includes advanced log, exp etc. functions (eg path integrals), you'll find this both a valuable learning tool and ongoing reference. Highly Recommended.

Library Picks reviews only for the benefit of Amazon shoppers and has nothing to do with Amazon, the authors, manufacturers or publishers of the items we review. We always buy the items we review for the sake of objectivity, and although we search for gems, are not shy about trashing an item if it's a waste of time or money for Amazon shoppers. If the reviewer identifies herself, her job or her field, it is only as a point of reference to help you gauge the background and any biases.

If you're a Mathematician or someone who understands the beauty of Functions and their place in Nature this reference book is a wonderful reference source. There is an update 4.1 to the Equator software freely available for Windows 10

Dennis Tuckerman

its a treasure - hard bound, glossy paper, collection of functions 13k book for 800 INR ..... can i ask for more?

Beautiful, clear exposition, and well organized! A lot of this info is available online, but this book makes it such a pleasure. Keep it around for a while and you will get to know a lot of functions as if they are old friends.

If you're a functions nut, then this is a really beautiful must-have for your library. This is an excellent new edition: much better than the previous and it has an accompanying CD. The new NIST replacement for Abramowitz and Stegun must be the first port of call, but this is a lovely second.

Excellent book ! Worth the buy. The book gives a Panorama of the main mathematical functions that we are encountering in sciences. The software in bonus is a plus in terms of value.

For the purpose targeted by the major users this book is unsurpassed even by handbooks of mathematical functions introduced nowadays.

Highly recommendable for all.

A customer