On the other hand, I'm taking a Linear Systems course and the required textbook is Signals and Systems by Oppenheim, one of the most expensive coffee table props to exist on this side of Silicon Valley.

Schaum's was only (price) and it seemed to cover all of the concepts found in a standard Linear Systems course. The only major difference was that instead of useless graphs, more useless techno-babble (to satisfy the needs of some Ph.D's that want to confuse the students so they feel strong and powerful - in other words maintain their authority), and sparse problems and even less frequent solutions, the text contains DETAILED solutions for its problems, along with useful equations and tables that HELP rather than confuse the student.

If you're taking a Linear Systems course, this book is MANDATORY. If instructors are reading this review, I highly recommend you grab a copy and see if you can use it as a supplement.

As a student, I can tell you that if you made other students purchase this text as a requirement, they would all eventually pick up a copy. It's THAT helpful.
I paid $100 for our required textbook and it's money down the drain.


Mandatory book for anyone working with signals and transform   January 9, 2001
Suhail Hasan (Redmond, WA United States)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

This is truly an excellent book to quickly recap the essentials of signals and their manipulations. By working along with the exercises, I was quickly able to come back to speed on such important issues such as convulutions, Fourier Transforms, and LTI systems.


Excellent as a cheap textbook and source of solved problems   February 14, 2006
calvinnme
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

This little Schaum's outline is an excellent introduction to signals and systems aimed primarily at the upper undergraduate electrical engineering student. It starts out with an introduction to the various properties of systems - Linearity, Time invariance, causality, BIBO stability - defines them clearly and explains what other properties hold if these properties are present. It does this in plain language that is absent in many expensive textbooks. Next it moves on to clearly describing convolution - the bane of many an EE student's existence. Next it shows how the loathsome task of convolution can be replaced by transform methods if you are dealing with an LTI system. The Laplace Transform method is introduced for continuous systems, and the Z-Transform for discrete time systems. Next Fourier analysis is explained for both continuous and discrete time systems. Next, the student gets just a taste of control theory with a chapter on state space analysis. The final chapter is on joining continuous and discrete systems with discussions on aliasing and sampling of continuous signals. These are very important since everything starts out and often ends up as an analog signal, even if you process it digitally. Of course, there is the ample helping of examples, solved problems, and unsolved problems that Schaum's outlines are famous for. I highly recommend this cost effective study aid.




Excellent book   August 30, 2003
Omar Castillo (Hacienda Heights, CA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

This is the book to get if you're an Electrical/Computer Engineering student. It should be worth more for its marvelous coverage of all the topics. It was nice to be able to have it as reference but it is also nice to have for learning concepts. I used this book extensively to teach myself Fourier Series and Fourier Transforms in preparation for an introduction to Communication Systems Engineering Class. This book has also helped me understand concepts for other classes (Laplace Transforms, Z-Transforms etc) I highly recommend this book. It is well written and flow nicely. A bonus is the problem sets with solutions.