Signals and Systems

The book I read to research this post was Signals and Systems For Dummies by Mark Wickert which is quite a good book which I bought from kindle. I might be being a bit unfair on this book as in the intro it says you need knowledge of engineering and things like calculus to understand this book. I probably am not knowledgeable enough on these topics so most of it I didn’t understand. What I did understand was interesting though. From what I understand of calculus the basic principle is x and y are related but variable amounts and you are given an equation which shows this. You draw a graph to show when x equals one amount, y equals another and this can be over an infinite scale. When you look at things like voltage and current you can see a similar relationship although it is quite a simple one. Some interesting things it says in the book are if you have 2 amplifiers set to the same frequency, they will cancel each other out. Also if you do a pop concert you may need a linear amplifier to take the vocals and music and broadcast it together without distortion. Of course some pop groups want distortion so use a non-linear amplifier. Another interesting thing is if you are doing a course in signals and systems, maybe as part of electrical engineering and it leads to an exam, there will normally be a few easy questions and it is a good idea to read the paper through and answer these questions first & it’s amazing how many students over look this. I think this book is for students doing something like applied maths or physics and I am sure it would help them. I have to say like another book I read a while back, Physics For Dummies, both books aren’t typical Dummies in being like anyone can read them, which seems a shame to me. Maybe an idea would be if Mark the author wrote a basic book explaining what you need to understand to grasp this book, that might be an idea. Maybe a Basic Signals and Systems For Dummies.