1. Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
  2. School of Mathematics
  3. Undergraduate
  4. Resource list

Resource list

To help you prepare for studying in the School of Mathematics, we have gathered together some resources which you may find interesting and informative. However, there is no pre-requisite reading that needs to be done.  

Online resources 

There are excellent online resources that introduce many topics relevant to our courses available, including: 

Reading list 

  • How to Solve It, George Polya 1990 This timeless book introduces heuristics, the study of the methods and rules of discovery, invention and human problem-solving.
  • How to Think like a Mathematician, Kevin Houston 2009 In this book Houston gives tips and techniques to ease new students into undergraduate mathematics, unlocking the world of definitions, theorems, and proofs. 
  • Why Study Mathematics? Vicky Neale 2020 This book explains the sort of maths you can expect to find at university and how it will be taught. It also highlights the wide variety of career options that a maths degree can open up. 
  • Calculus, Apostol, T. M., Waltham, Mass; London: Blaisdell, 1967
  • Calculus, Spivak, M, Houston, TX: Publish or Perish, 2008
  • Thomas' Calculus, Weir, M. D., Hass, J., & Thomas, George B., Boston: Pearson, 2010
  • Schaum's outlines calculus, Ayres, F., & Mendelson, E., New York; London: Schaum, 2013
  • Mechanics, P. Smith, R. C. Smith, Wiley, 1990
  • Classical mechanics : an undergraduate text, R. D. Gregory, Cambridge, 2006
  • Linear algebra, R. Kaye and R. Wilson, Oxford, 1998
  • An Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations, J. C. Robinson, Cambridge, 2004
  • Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems, W. E. Boyce and R. C. DiPrima, Wiley, 1969
  • Proofs from THE BOOK." Aigner and Ziegler. 6th ed. Springer. 2018.
  • Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine, H. Fry, Doubleday, 2018
  • Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, C. C. Perez, Chatto & Windus, 2019
  • Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and TensorFlow, A. Geron, O'Reilly Media.

Research and Innovation at the University 

Our research actively informs our teaching programme and you can follow these links to find out about our current research areas and work: 

Taster Lectures 

University-level resources 

The University of Leeds also offers many useful resources to help you transition to higher education learning.