Customer Reviews

Introduction to Electric Circuits

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

"Electric Circuits," 6th Edition by Dorf and Svoboda rates as the WORST text I've ever used in my undergraduate or graduate training. While it has many helpful tables and illustrations, the core-material presentation is garbled and not easily understood. This is complicated further by an inexcusable plethora of errors contained throughout the text. Though the authors are obviously knowledgeable in the subject matter, from me they earn a grade of "F" for their ability as writers. When used as an adjunct or self-learning text, where the student's knowledge comes directly from the textbook and without the aid of live lectures, this book is useless.

The following three textbooks cover the SAME material as Dorf and are much better suited as adjunct and self-learning texts. These are presented in the order of recommendation to you: (Monier is by far the best of all)

1. "Electric Circuit Analysis," by Charles J. Monier, 2001, Prentice Hall.

This text is EXCELLENT. As the chapter material and the math progress in complexity (up to LaPlace Transforms) the author inserts "math review chapters," which are especially helpful. The material is presented clearly and in an exact fashion in this book.

2. "Electric Circuits," by Alenander and Sadiku

3. "Introductory Circuit Analysis," by Robert L. Boylestad

Unless you're taking a lecture course directly from the authors or have access to a professor familiar with all the errors and quirks of this text, don't waste your time with it.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or business relationship or interests in any of the texts discussed here.

It's a mixed book. The exposition is fairly clear with plenty of worked examples and additional problems with answers. This is particularly good for people teaching themselves the material who need lots of practice and can't go to their TA's for help.

The book does use some calculus, but not an unreasonable amount. Some material is easier to understand given the proper mathematical tools and I believe that most of the author's use of calculus in the text is appropriate. There are a couple of exercises that require integration by parts, which I do not consider reasonable. There are also a couple of exercises that result in large, ugly polynomials to be simplified. Perhaps there are ways to avoid these given a cleverer approach than mine. Overall the math isn't excessive, the explanations are clear and there are only a few "What the %*@&!#! are you talking about?!?" moments.

The authors do appear to have been somewhat sloppy about proofreading their text and there are errors not in the official errata sheet. Some are small, like the inductor that mistakenly got assigned a resistor symbol. Some are more serious, like the inductor value that was off by a factor of 10 in one of the excercises. And of course there is the statement on page 8 of the sixth edition that says that the Internet was established in 1995. I guess that this must have been what Al Gore was talking about.

Oh and beware the "Electric Circuit Study Applets." I did finally get them to work, although the process was quite painful. There is no CD included with the book. The reader is required to go to the website, type in a access key, register and so on. The applets are very large java files that take a long time to download. My browser kept dying halfway through the process and it took many tries before the entire process worked. I still haven't managed to get the worked examples pdf file to load properly.

This text book was not easy to read or understand. It is NOT a textbook for an introduction to circuit theory. The example problems were simple but the exercises and problems did not ease a student into the understanding of electric circuits. The book tried to give a failed introduction into filters and signals.

It can not be used as a reference book, you can never find what you are looking for.

This is, to date, one of the worst textbooks I have been made to use in a college class. The text does _not_ give general formule for the principles it explains, but instead uses numbers almost exclusively in example problems, leaving the student to wonder just what is really going on. Every week, when I sit down to work my Circuits I homework, I feel like hanging Dorf and Svoboda by their mustaches - all because this book is so wretched. The end-of-chapter problems are useless to help understand concepts, as they frequently do not relate adequately to the material presented in each section.

If you ever read this, Dorf, Svoboda, please stop trying to confuse students with your work. If you want to teach, teach. If you want to be confusing, go into law.

This book is worthless. Its not even worth the paper it is printed on. You will spend way to much time trying to figure out little simple details, that aren't well explained. The problems at the end of the section don't follow along with the exercises in the book. It is confusing and it doesn't do all the steps in the math involved making the math hard to follow. The programs on the CD don't follow the examples in the book. I have James A. Svoboda for a professor and he makes little more sense than the book. I paid about a 100 bucks for this book, and if it doesn't get burned when I get out of Svoboda's class I'd be surprised.

The author gave a concise calculus based coverage of electric circuit theory while dazzling the reader with interesting everyday applications. A very well written book with competitive problems. This book should be recommended to beginning engineers. It is not meant for individuals who do not enjoy the calculus background.

This book is without a doubt the worst textbook I have ever been assigned in a college course. It is useless as a reference, it is boring, and the layout does nothing more than confuse the reader. I knew that this textbook was bad when I tried to look up a formula that I had forgotten. The book was not able to explain to me something that I ALREADY KNEW. What a shame.

This book is supposed to be taught hand in hand with calculus. The two supplement eachother. You must know calculus at the very least, and better yet a solid undertanding of elementary differential equations. The end of chapter problems are well laid out and varied. There are design, verification, and complete analytical problems. The book introduces the concept behind being able to look at a circuit and analyzing key components such as voltage, current, resistance, inductance, capacitance, impedence, by using KVL, KCL, mesh analysis, superpostion, and other key techniques. Good book but the very long errata for this book means only 3 stars.

This is a very good textbook for passionate students who have a solid background in physics and mathematics. It is not suitable for the average freshman, nor is it suitable for technical or trades students.

When I say a solid background, I mean you had better be an A student in physics and mathematics otherwise you'll gradually be left behind.

Dorf doesn't baby students with this book. High school education has been dumbed down disgracefully these days as bright students are "streamed" with the not-so-bright. School education is politically correct and has been excessively feminized and made "inclusive." That means bright students should find a good school, or work by themselves, and work hard.

This is not to say that readers who have problems with this book are not very bright. It could mean they've had a bad high school education or their college/university dumbed down their mathematics and physics courses in response to the high drop-out rates. You need to be *very* good with, as a minimum, first year mathematics (calculus, linear algebra) and physics (calculus based physics). Don't make this text your first ever introduction to circuits and things like voltage, resistance, current, and so on. You should have met all these in your physics courses! (I *did* say you need a solid background in physics, didn't I?)

If you have a bit of time before using this book, or you want to repeat a class that uses this book, grab yourself a copy of Basic Technical Mathematics with Calculus (SI Version) 8th Edition by Washington, and work your way from there with more advanced engineering mathematics texts. Also pick up Grossman's Elementary Linear Algebra, or Strang's Linear Algebra. Now get yourself a good physics text, such as the Six Ideas in Physics series, and understand it. It may also help to familiarize yourself with basic electric circuits by working your way through a more elementary text that doesn't use calculus (assuming you need to work on your math before using this text, of course).

Go for it!

This book isn't really as horrible as other reviews indicate. The basic fact is that you gotta have a strong foundation in calculus and basic physics before trying to take on this book. I strongly reccomend these pre-requisites are very crucial in order to understand even little bit of what goes on inside this book. I agree ithe book is very confusing for a beginner or a person who's totally new into circuits but in my opinion the whole thing depends on how strong your background is in calculus and university phsyics. For me the book works, i haven't encountered much difficulty although i did have to struggle sometimes with some chapter problems in the book. Overall, i'd give this book 7 and a half out of 10, on a scale of 0 to 10.