Students progressing to advanced calculus are frequently confounded by the dramatic shift from mechanical to theoretical and from concrete to abstract. This text bridges the gap, offering a systematic development of the real number system and careful treatment of mappings, sequences, limits, continuity, and metric spaces. The first five chapters consist of a systematic development of many of the important properties of the real number system, plus detailed treatment of such concepts as mappings, sequences, limits, and continuity. The sixth and final chapter discusses metric spaces and generalizes many of the earlier concepts and results involving arbitrary metric spaces. An index of axioms and key theorems appears at the end of the book, and more than 300 problems amplify and supplement the material within the text. Geared toward students who have taken several semesters of basic calculus, this volume is an ideal prerequisite for mathematics majors preparing for a two-semester course in advanced calculus.
