Customer Reviews

Signals and Systems Made Ridiculously Simple

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've taken 3 control systems/ signals and systems type courses now, 2 in mechanical engineering and 1 in electrical engineering at MIT. People have tried to teach me Bode plots and whatnot before and I could follow them, but when it came to tests or applying it at a job, I had maybe a 50% chance of getting it right. I was basically making educated guesses.

Near the end of the 3rd course I decided to get this book. It's clear and explicit on how to do things. More importantly, it makes clear what is important and what isn't. I find that professors who have taught for years and years too often forget what's important and what needs to be stressed for the students to do well and to understand. This book clarifies those issues along with giving explicit instructions on how to understand and solve problems.

Definitely get this book if there's any chance you might use signals and systems in the future.

This book does a really nice job explaining difficult concepts of an introductory signals/systems course. Clearly written, with excellent diagrams, this book is a must for anyone studying signals at an undergraduate level.

This is the best book I have found which gives you the best explanation. If you really want to understand how it works this is a must have. This is a quote from the book page 70 : "it is important to maintain an intuitive understanding, otherwise, you will likely just get buried in mathematical details and will fail to understand its practical applications". I couldn't agree more.

This book is the only thing that got me through Signals and Systems. While most text books get bogged down in the mathematics, this book clearly and concisely explained the logic behind working through the problems.

Every MIT student who takes Signals and Systems buys this book. I can't think of a better recommendation.

I bought this book expecting it to make Linear Systems easier to understand.

I also bought Schaum's Outline of Signals and Systems and got more out of that than SS Made Ridiculously Simple.

SSMRS has almost no sample problems (solved at least), it's someone's notebook just made prettier.

Schaum's, OTOH - was written by a former professor at my university. It contains hundreds (maybe thousands) of problems with detailed solutions, ALONG with easy to use equations and tables. I.e. network equations for resistors, capacitors, and inductors in Laplace transform.

I can see how one would pay for a notebook, but SSMRS isn't worth it. I don't see how its getting such good reviews from everyone - it's even more worthless than Oppenheim's Signals and Systems.

From this reviewer's perspective, Schaum's Outline of Signals and Systems can pretty much hold its own as a textbook if used by an instructor that knows his or her "stuff."

So I'll have to give this book only 2 stars, for being vague with problems and for making things look too simple. In a way, the author didn't lie - he made the subject of Signals and Systems simple. Unfortunately, it is TOO simple to use for College Level signals and systems if you have a bad textbook to start with.

My recommendation: save your money and get the Schaum's Outline.

This book is stunningly good! I have been doing these kinds of calculations almost by rote for years, but it wasn't until I read this book that I developed deep insight into what was behind the calculations. Authors of "standard" textbooks,especially in this area,rarely take the trouble to dissect the math in such detail and to make the connections between the physical world and its analytical representation. This is the kind of thing that one generally gets only from master teachers. I only wish that I had discovered this book sooner! If you want to really understand the anaytical basis of digital systems analysis, this is the book for you.

I believe this is a good book. It provides insight. But let's put things as they are; if you are a newcomer to this subject, or someone who wishes to expand knowledge by studying general concepts, you will be disappointed. This is not a fun, novel-like read. You need to keep your calculator and pad at hand while studying it, and make some stops to study the examples by yourself. If it tells you to go back and solve that example again, just do it. Otherwise you are just kidding yourself. There are some reference issues in the sense that tha author skips several steps and doesn't tell you the formula he got the result from. But there is nothing an engineering student can't handle.

If you are like the kind of person who has taken 2 courses and read couple texts and still have no clue what on earth people are talking about, this book is useful and insightful. It will make things fall into place, if you already have the pieces ready. But it does not create the pieces for you. That's probably the problem with the title, it's simply not an intro.

I used this book when I took 6.003 at MIT (Signals and Systems core class for EE majors) when I studied for the final exam, back when Zoher was head TA for the class. Prior to using this book, I didn't have much of a clue what was going on (I had gotten B's on the 2 midterms), but after studying this book intensively for a couple days, I got a 97% on the final exam and established a firm foundation to continue onto do well in the following classes in the series, 6.011 (Control Systems and Signal Processing) and 6.341 (Digital Signal Processing).

I purchased this book as a supplemental overview for a course. I found it to be vague and unclear. The style was surprisingly conversational for technical material and the fairly freeform structure of the text made it difficult to pick out relevant sections.

If you are looking for a clarifying study guide, I would suggest that you continue with your search.

I am an older than average Electrical Engineering student and have used this book for the better part of my sophomore and junior years. If you are learn them as new concepts or just need it as a reference book it is worth having on your bookshelf. A wonderful book whose name describes it perfectly. I wouldn't have passed Linear Systems at the University of Iowa if I didn't have this book. Well done sir!