# Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin

3 Hacker News commenters recommended Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for its terse, rigorous treatment of analysis that rewards line-by-line study and working through exercises. Critics say it throws theorems together with little context or pedagogical explanation.

## Why people recommend it

- Rewards line-by-line proof study (1 comments): "one has to work through the proof line by line in order gain enough understanding to do the exercises" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48036440))
- Small and terse, yet demanding (1 comments): "Small, short, terse yet has brought many undergraduates to tears." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45975779))
- Has problems of varying difficulty (1 comments): "Take one of the easier problems from Rudin." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283191))

## What people warn about

- Theorems stated with little context (2 comments): "it comes from a time when mathematics textbooks were not at all judged by their pedagogical value" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49242650)) "books that throw theorems one after the other without any context, like Baby Rudin" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48744099))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Algorithms for Optimization by Kochenderfer and Wheeler](https://hackerapproved.com/p/algorithms-for-optimization.md): 10 recommend
- [Mathematics for Computer Science by Lehman, Leighton and Meyer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mathematics-for-computer-science.md): 8 recommend
- [Numerical Recipes by Press et al.](https://hackerapproved.com/p/numerical-recipes.md): 7 recommend
- [Concrete Mathematics by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik](https://hackerapproved.com/p/concrete-mathematics.md): 7 recommend
- [Start Doing Graph Theory by Sam Burns](https://hackerapproved.com/p/start-doing-graph-theory.md): 7 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0070856133?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9780070856134) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin", https://hackerapproved.com/p/principles-of-mathematical-analysis/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).