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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's got lots of maths..., May 20, 2002
But as an undergrad with GPA 5.8 (~distinction), this book really doesn't explain to ME the maths in an engineering context. For example, Chapter 3, with Orthonormal/Orthogonal signals, had me completely left in the dark as to why, as part of my job as a microelectronic engineer, I would want to orthonormalise a bunch of signals, even though the introductory paragraph goes:"Orthogonal representations of signals are of general importance in solving many engineering problems. Two of the reasons this is so are that it is mathematically convenient to represent arbitrary signals as a weighted sum of orthogonal waveforms, since many of the calculations involving signals are simplified by using such a representation and that it is possible to visualize the signal as a vector in an orthogonal coordinate system..." It then shows me some square waves that are apparently "orthonormal" and proceeds to dive straight in from there with the maths. In my subject we wrote a matlab program to show the orthonormalised version of a bunch of exponential signals (t^n where n=0..5); now /those/ final waveforms helped me understand better, but still.. Personally I find a lot of the maths quite ugly (orthonormalisation is just an example that could have been explained better), which I guess is the nature of the subject. But then maths isn't really my strength (I get Credits for my maths subjects) - and perhaps other readers find this book more inspiring. I have talked about this book with fellow students and I can only conclude (personally) that students with only an average ability/interest in maths will perhaps struggle with some of the proofs and find themselves "just remembering". Perhaps this is simply a property of the subject in general, in which case I'm not as smart as I think I am, but I haven't read any other books to compare. The author clearly knows his stuff, but I don't - I study 5 other subjects full time and I do some contract work. It seems he has forgotten that things aren't necessarily as obvious to the reader as they are to him. Actually, it seems this is the case with my current lecturer also, so I'm really not liking "Signals and Systems" at the moment.. especially since my copy of this book I [bought] AUD for was stolen before I really had a chance to go through it. Lots of detail, but probably too much. If this is you're only recommended text, go to your lectures. This book appears to be the "algebra of signals", and no more.
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