Terrible Introductory Book

I used this book in my undergraduate S&S class. We used both the book and the labs that go along with it. While the labs were decent, the book was almost one of the most frustrating "technical" books I have ever read. For example, the handling of the ABCD matrix form and subsequent segway into the Impulse Response was horrible (chapter 5).

It leaves out key points when describing ideas. You simply cannot follow along with some of the concepts presented when explanations are incomplete. One of the most annoying things about the book is that key points, that you must understand to get any further, are "left as an exercise for the reader". In addition, the book makes points by saying "Its completely obvious..." or "It can be easily shown that..." and then not really explaining anything because, apparently, the solution is so obvious.

Compounding the problem(s) is that the worked problems in the book are not fully worked. They work a little bit of it, and then explain away the rest of the solution with a sentence (or two). So if your the least bit confused there is no way find out what it is you really dont understand. This might be excusable if the chapter problems had some answers in the back of the book, or in a supplemental manual, but that is not the case.

I would think that, for someone who already understands the material, this book would seem quite nice. But to somebody who is new to the material, this book is an absolute nightmare. To any would-be teachers reading this and considering using it, beware, your students will have a horrible time with this book and will not understand what they need to in an introductory course, and they will hate you to boot.

I feel quite bad for the CE/EE students at Berkeley as Im sure they always get stuck with this book.

Other Reviews

• Very poor...well everything
• Very confusing and difficult to use
• Terrible Introductory Book
• bad bad bad
• Difficult Book to Understand