OT Math rant, was Re: [sdiy] DSP book recommendation wanted

[Bradley Slavik]

OK, so I'll address briefly what was already transpired in this thread.

1. Math books are written for the convenience of the teacher, not the
student. (there are exceptions) This is true about electronics books too. Think how many bad ones there 
are before you come to "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. Textbooks are written to make money 
and laid out in a way that is convenient to teach and test, not necessarily in a good order to learn the 
material.

2. Polish, Russian, and Slavic people in general have an advantage learning math because their language 
is very difficult. It imposed upon the speaker a responsibility to be able to follow a fairly complicated 
set of grammatical rules just to communicate. Having once learned such a system, they are more likely to 
be able to apply it to other logical systems such as mathematics.

3. I don't know where you missed out in math class. The e^i0 notation for complex numbers is usually 
taught in the second algebra class in high school, trigonometry, pre-calculus, calculus, differential 
equations. So while you may have missed one of these courses, you should have had several opportunities 
to pick up the method of Argand diagrams without having to go too far into mathematics. Bad on your 
teachers and school board if you took more than two of these courses and the material was not really 
covered in at least one of them.

Feel free to write with any math questions you have. I have less electronics theory and hands-on 
experience than almost anyone on this list, but I have plenty of math knowledge that I am not trying to 
hoard or snub you with.

Sincerely,

Bradley Slavik