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 | | Signals and Systems: Continuous and Discrete by Rodger E. Ziemer, William H. Tranter, D. Ronald Fannin ISBN-10: 0024316415 ISBN-10: 0-02-431641-5 ISBN-13: 9780024316417 ISBN-13: 978-0-02-431641-7 Hardcover 1993-01 Macmillan Coll Div Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description A market leader in previous editions, this book continues to offer a complete survey of continuous and discrete linear systems. It utilizes a systems approach to solving practical engineering problems, rather than using the framework of traditional circuit theory. Numerous examples from circuit theory appear throughout, however, to illustrate the various systems techniques introduced. The Fourth Edition has been thoroughly updated to effectively integrate the use of computers and to accurately reflect the latest theoretical advances. | ||
Reviews | ||
I absolutely agree! I absolutely agree with Carey Witkov and Zaher Kassas, while completely disagreeing with most of the other reviews. To learn formalized disciplines, any of them, from Signal Theory to Microeconomics to Fluid Dynamics to whatever you want, there is only *one* way: you *must* sit there, in front of the book, with your pencil and/or ballpen and your block of paper (white, if possible: since lines and squares tend to make you lose your concentration), and you have to spend your time, all the time you need, to go deeply through the ideas the book is trying to convey. In other words, *you-have-to-write*! Furthermore, you possibly (not necessarily: but, imho, it would nevertheless help very much) will have to derive yourself again *all* the formal deductions the authors use for arguing their theses: especially the obscure or hard ones. You'll have to, or at least you'll better try... Of course, to get to all of these things, you have to be patient and to spend all the time you need until you'll be sure you actually have understood what you read. And how can you be sure you actually have? Simple: close the book, and try to sistematically rephrase and/or reformulate on your own what you've read, forcing yourself to *write* your personal deductions (especially the ones about the hard points) down on your nice block of white paper with your nice ballpen or pencil. And when you come to a point where you can't, you have to go back to your book and read the point again, patiently trying to understand *where*, in the pages before the hard point, something has gone wrong or the stream of logico-formal deductions of the author(s) has stopped flowing into your head, or has broken up along the way from the page to your mind. Could all these efforts require you to read other books, or look for more information in other places? Of course it could: otherwise, what kind of research activity would it be? For we must be clear: seriously studying a matter (*any* matter) IS a research activity. Trying to learn (read) something which is formally structured and/or organized in an abstract fashion just like you would do if you were reading a novel simply doesn't work. You just *can't* learn mathematics (and all that) only by browsing through the books as if they were comics: and just reading and reciting in aloud voice isn't enough, if one really wants to grasp the essence, or the logic structure, of what one is reading. Only after having subdued to such a discipline (yes: I think we just can call it so) one has the right to come here, or wherever else, and demolish a treatise. Never before! We're not talking about novels and science fiction ;) Let me add a final consideration (which is general: that is, it applies more or less to the whole Amazon bookstore): this is the reason why, in my humble opinion, this whole system of allowing everybody to rate the books at his/her absolute discretion tends, in the very end, to be completely useless. Here, too, one should make any attempt, if anything, to separate his/her own personal experience - and maybe his/her own disgust for having been forced to study a specific tome just in order to pass an exam - from some kind of objective judgement. Otherwise, it's nothing more than a whining complaint. Sorry ^___~ ______________________________________ P.S. [30/01/2007] Then, there is the fact that this book, like most of the other books published by the five or six ultra-mega-global multimedia corporations (I mean: Springer - Kluwer, McGraw-Hill, and so on... you know the list) are *waaaay* too costly. *This* would be a real matter for an actual (and maybe also effective) campaign. Though, it's a completely different story ;) | ||
One of the better signals and systems books Unlike texts that read like they have been compiled by cutting and pasting, this one reads like the authors are directly talking to you. Some things I like about this text: * It does not omit the hard stuff, like the inversion integral for laplace transforms so you don't have to rely only on transform tables. * It includes topics not often found in introductory signals and systems texts like the chirp-z transform. * It has several worked examples for each section and shows how to perform the calculations both by hand and using matlab. * The end-of-chapter problems are doable. * The approach taken in the text is a general systems approach and not a narrow circuits approach. While everyone's entitled to their opinion many of the negative reviews appeared to be critical without substance. | ||
Poor in all respects. I had the extreme displeasure of having to use this book in an undergraduate course called Linear Signals and Systems. It is poorly written and laid out first off. The ideas and concepts are half formed and the proofs are all well over any student's head who has only had one class in differential equations (rendering them pointless, for it is intend for just such people). I would actually sit down sometimes, tell myself that the book couldn't be as bad as I had it pegged, and try to read over the material that had been covered in class to learn it. I always ended up flipping pages, frustrated, sure that I had missed a page or paragraph somewhere, but I never had. It's that bad. Don't buy this. I wound up selling it before the class was over and relying on my notes and my old Ciruits text book, which was quite good (it was also written incidentally by J. David Irwin, the head of our department). | ||
Makes You Love Communication I was really surprised by some of the negative comments written on this book, and that is why I decided to write this comment. This book was the one assigned to the undergraduate course I took entitled Signals and Systems. In fact, this book made me like communications and signal processing, and I believe that it motivated me a lot (beside the other book by Ziemer & Tranter entitled Principles of Communication Systems: Modulation, Noise, Systems, 4th edition) to go for the graduate studies in communications and signal processing. What I liked about the two books was that they assume NO prior knowledge of the topics covered and they move on smoothly from one subject to another so that the student will have a better understanding of the "big picture" as he/she moves on. Well, I guess that the other "negative" comments about this book were written by students who expected to understand the topics covered in this book from one skim read. Let me say that that is NOT the case here. In order to understand the topics covered very well, you should read them more than once and try to solve as many problems as possible. But trust me on this: once you do so, you will grasp the material very well and will have a "feel" of what is going on. | ||
Not worth the paper it is printed on. If I was a tree, I would be upset that some of my fellow trees made the ultimate sacrifice to become the paper that is used in this piece of trash someone pawned off as a textbook for a signals and systems course. I really expected a lot more from authors coming from the University of Colorado and VA Tech. This book completely tarnishes the names of those fine schools. The book is poorly organized, poorly written and the proofs for most of the equations are given as problems at the end of the chapter. Most of the examples that are given are special cases and can not be used for things that are more common in real life. Footnotes often take up more than half a page making the book extremely hard to read and comprehend. The vocabulary is such that the authors explain the words used in the text over and over. This book is one notch below useless. If I could I would rate it minus two stars. In an effort to save my grade for the course using this book I went ahead and purchased two other books in the hope to supplement this one. At the end of this semester I am burning this book to prevent it from spreading the pain and frustration it has caused me onto other people. If you have a choice, I highly recommend that you do not buy this book. | ||