Customer Reviews

Feedback Systems: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I came into my control theory course, for which this book was a required course text, excited to learn about a very interesting and useful topic. Instead, this book came close to making me hate the subject.

Frankly, I have had more than enough of this atrocity. The book is riddled with a ridiculous number of typos and errors that range from amusingly glaring proofreading lapses at least several times per chapter, like "A block diagram of a basic feedback loop is shown in Figure 11.1. LDH](6 Jan 08) Reworded the third and fourth sentences. OK?" to extremely frustrating serious errors in formulas. I actually doubt that the book even got proofread by anyone at all. I do not believe I would be exaggerating by saying that there are several hundreds of errors in these 400 pages, giving it the honor of being the most error-riddled science text that I have ever read throughout high school and college. In addition, equations with mysterious origins, surrounded by explaining text that in fact adds to the mystery, are a common phenomenon. Terms are not defined clearly before being used extensively; sometimes I did not understand the specific meaning of a term introduced earlier even after going to the index, looking up the specific page and rereading! The writing is extremely dry and boring, and is good enough to put the lightest sleeper to sleep. For all of the above reasons a lot of times when trying to force myself to plow through one chapter, I had to fight hard to resist the temptation to throw the book at the wall across the room in irritation. I don't feel that I managed to learn anything from this book.

Books like this should not be published if all that the authors can give is a haphazard effort hastily, carelessly and thoughtlessly put together, whose only achievement will be to confuse students.

I used this book in a course on classical control theory. It's a great book for explaining concepts in control theory. You'll need background in calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra in order to understand it.

The book is great for giving you an understanding of control theory. Whoever said that there are errors in the book is correct, and you will notice errors if you choose to work out the steps that the author chooses to skip. The author has created a list of Errata to go through at [...]

This book is an excellent introduction to modern control theory. Rich in interdisciplinary examples and it goes directly to the point. The book gives the intuitive idea without unnecessary math. It also doesn't include a lot of the classical control theory that is taught in electrical engineering courses, focusing more on the modern stuff. Understanding the math in the book requires more prior knowledge than is said in the preface of the book.

This is a very good textbook for feedback control. I used it in my Feedback Control grad class. I really liked the book!! Had some real stuff in it.