Wavelets and Filter Banks

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Summary: Engineers need math, but on their terms.
Review: At many US universities, math departments offer service courses in math for the engineers, and there is a periodic discussion of the curriculum. One difficulty is that the two sides speak different languages;-- in math, it is linear algebra, calculus...,- and in engineering, signals, high-pass/low-pass filters, downsampling/upsampling, filter bank, polyphase matrix...A wonderful feature of the Strang-Nguyen book is that it speaks both languages. In this way it is refreshing, and it stands out

in a class of its own. It has been tested in courses for engineers, and stood the test. From what I hear, it is equally popular in the two cultures, math and engineering.

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Summary: UT PA - CAI Coordinator
Review: I am presently full time staff and part-time teacher electronics lab and doing research in image processing. I need a new way or new material so as to use wavelets for my research project. It is one of the most readable texts that I have encountered. I was looking for a very applied book and this seems a good one. There is one thing that I found disappointing. I found that in order to understand some things I had to jump to sections further into the book. Ideas are introduced and are not fully explained until later in the book. This leaves the reader puzzled and sometimes very confused when given the first exposure to a topic. I think the development of ideas could have been more cohesive. All in all, it's not a bad book as a reference

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Summary: Lost in Chapter 5
Review: I bought this book with a great enthusiasm and hope to learn something about filter banks. Soon after I started to read it I figured that the book has a great deal of inconsistencies. To begin with the notation is awkward, and the dimensions of the vectors and matrices are often infinite! Clearly implying that the authors are not very practical after all... Chapter 4 on filter banks is more or less OK, with mentioning of many types and choices for filter designs but nothing deep and concrete (In Page 121 I couldn't find the reference "[VK]"). Chapter 5 is a disaster: Title of Section 5.2 should be "Orthogonal" instead of "Orthonormal", Page 148 says "presented below" but there are nothing "below", other mathematical proofs are sloppy and invalid. I recommend people interested in filter banks to read Vaidyanathan's book instead.

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Summary: "overall a good text"!!! you gotta be kidding me
Review: I just can't believe these reviews: "overall a good text" - doh! I was unfortunate enough to take a course about wavelets for which the professor used this book as the main text (btw the course was offered by Prof. Truong Nguyen, and yes he is one of the authors). After 3 months of painful !struggle! with this book I was sure about only one thing: I could not learn anything about wavelets. First of all, there is no logical flow, as a matter of fact there is no flow of any kind. The authors just leap forward and backward leaving lots of unanswered questions, which is in my humble opinion, a very annoying thing that should not happen while using a text book. Clear statements about what the hell is going on are very rare. Most of the time you are left with vague statements which tell only part of the story. Right now I am in the third year of my ph.d and I am yet to meet an electrical engineer who thinks this book is actually useful in some sense. Don't waste your money on it. Start with "Wavelet and Wavelet Transforms" Burrus, once you get the feel of it check the books that math departments use for teaching wavelets.

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Summary: overall a good text
Review: I think the book is very good compared to other texts that I have perused on the subject. I am presently teaching myself the material so as to use wavelets for my research project. It is one of the most readable texts that I have encountered. I was looking for a very applied book and this seems a good one. There are some proofs but the text is not flooded with functional analysis theorems. There is one thing that I found disappointing. I found that in order to understand some things I had to jump to sections further into the book. Ideas are introduced and are not fully explained until later in the book. This leaves the reader puzzled and sometimes very confused when given the first exposure to a topic .(It is easy to get the wrong idea when you are given a superficial development). I think the development of ideas could have been more cohesive. Other than that, it is a good book.

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Summary: Engaging style but not written for the unwashed.
Review: My first reaction to Professor Strang's superficially friendly, "just us folks", "you're gonna love this result" style was positive until I realized I wasn't absorbing anything. Could it be me? Well, yes, it is. I just am not a brilliant co-worker who can grasp Strang's giant leaps of intuition and say, "Wow, Gil, I see what you are saying, that really is neat!" This book is written in bursts of enthusiasm with little emphasis on details (like indices on summation operators) and little continuity. It appears to have a layered structure where Strang breezes through an introduction dropping all sorts of sophisticated concepts along with "don't worry, it will all become clear later". Unfortunately at the next layer Strang does not connect up with previous droppings but simply drops more. I am amazed that Matlab would attach this book to their wavelet toolbox, which by the way has a beautiful user's manual. An alternative to this book, "Wavelet and Wavelet Transforms" by Sidney Burrus and friends, is written in a clear step-by-step manner with attention to details (and with a reasonable step size). Upon reading Burrus's book I could go back to Strang's and figure out some of the things he was so pleased with (other than himself).

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Summary: a very good book in wavelets
Review: This is a very good book in wavelets. It's included theory of wavelets and its application.