My instructor chose Arfken as the text for our Mathematical Physics class. He
has a high opinion of the book, although he did not require it to be read and
did not assign any of the exercises. Rather than using Arfken, most of the
students in my class used various mathematics and physics books from the
university library.
My opinion of Arfken is that it is so condensed that it is
not understandable to undergraduates. You need to consult other texts
extensively to fill in the gaps. For example, Arfken develops tensor analysis on
pages 126 thru 130, 5 pages total. My copy of Applications of Tensor Analysis by
McConnell does the same on it's first 171 pages. I hesitate to say that Arfken
is useless, but you can draw your own conclusion from my last example.
Arfken is
so abbreviated that it is not useful to the undergraduate as a reference either,
in my opinion. Perhaps it is useful to persons who are familiar with the subject
matter in advance, I am not sure. Were one or a group of people to flush this
book out it might be more useful, but it would no doubt become many volumes.
