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by jfv 3003 days ago
Do NOT read Rudin. He is terse and unless you are already well versed in mathematics it is simply incomprehensible.

My recommendation would be Spivak’s calculus. There are a million great exercises and the book is beautifully typeset and overall a pleasure to read. Don’t let the title fool you, there are analysis exercises in there.

2 comments

You have to decide between two things:

1 - you want to learn to prove things. Then yes, Rudin is a shitty text to learn by yourself because he really likes a certain type of, for lack of a better phrase, "beautiful" proof that requires a bunch of insightful jumps to get to. He'll then show the proof and really not discuss about how he got there. What a student needs is the ability to string facts/theorems that he or she knows together and how to turn that into a proof. Without a good professor, Rudin is (imo) terrible for that.

2 - you want to learn analysis, and care less about proving things. Reasons for this may be you need a bit the underpinnings for various reasons, and you care less about proving things and more about understanding. I think Rudin is a pretty good text then.

Spivak's calculus is a great book but be prepared to spend a lot of hours on it.

I LOVED Rudin. It was a long time ago, though.

At the very least, it has great exercises.

I also loved Spivak.