Engel - comments

By Johannes Tang Lek Huo

This is good, but there is room for improvement. The abundant amount of problems (~1300) is enough for any beginner to start from scratch. But I expected the book to cover more especially inequalities (which I think is bad, not every complete, Power Mean Inequality, Holder's inequality, Jensen's inequality are not discussed and convexity and concavity are only mentioned in passing), geometry (some topics like combinatorial geometry, convex hull are not included, to which all Chinese Olympiad books devote a nice chapter). Some more can be expected of Functional Equations. Chinese books have nicer treatment of sequences. However, most Chinese books overlook Functional Equations (which may have been discussed in Sec 1, 2, or 3 books of which I still have no chance to get hold).

By John Scholes

I have not yet seen the famed Chinese books! However, Engel is good. I quite like its treatment of inequalities (although I agree it is not comprehensive).

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