Physiological Control Systems : Analysis, Simulation, and Estimation

Rating:
Summary: Control Systems from 10,000 feet with a near useless index
Review: I have been using this text for a class in Physiological Control Systems, but have been largely disappointed. One of my disappointing experiences is on p. 170-1, where Khoo shows how to get an RLC model transfer function out of MATLAB's ss(). Since the MATLAB documentation on ss() is skimpy, this is a place where Khoo could have added value, illuminating what the A, B, C, and D matrices represent to ss(), but Khoo simply brushes past the opportunity. Khoo also discusses bifurcation in the logistic map, but if you look for 'logistic' in the index, you won't find it. Khoo mentions Fitzhugh-Nagumo and Hodgkin-Huxley within the context of his section on Bonhoeffer-van der Pol, but those four authors are not in the index (Bonhoeffer and van der Pol are). I admit to not having made a comprehensive study of the MATLAB examples, but I downloaded his code for sensitivity analysis (sensanl.m and two supporting .m files) mentioned in section 7.3.2, and consider the code to be poorly written. If I didn't have Dorf & Bishop's "Modern Control Systems, 9th Edition" to fall back on, I would have been in dire straights getting anything beyond a cursory reading out of Khoo's text. In short, this book should command a price in the $50 to $60 range, not the stellar $110-120 its priced at. Dorf & Bishop is priced about the same and delivers three times the value that Khoo does. Every chapter where I made an effort to get to the bottom of some discussion, I found Khoo's exposition wanting. The index is exasperatingly useless. There are only two entries under 'H', one under 'K', one under 'W', etc. That's alarming for a book with 307 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Control Systems from 10,000 feet with a near useless index
Review: I have been using this text for a class in Physiological Control Systems, but have been largely disappointed. One of my disappointing experiences is on p. 170-1, where Khoo shows how to get an RLC model transfer function out of MATLAB's ss(). Since the MATLAB documentation on ss() is skimpy, this is a place where Khoo could have added value, illuminating what the A, B, C, and D matrices represent to ss(), but Khoo simply brushes past the opportunity. Khoo also discusses bifurcation in the logistic map, but if you look for 'logistic' in the index, you won't find it. Khoo mentions Fitzhugh-Nagumo and Hodgkin-Huxley within the context of his section on Bonhoeffer-van der Pol, but those four authors are not in the index (Bonhoeffer and van der Pol are). I admit to not having made a comprehensive study of the MATLAB examples, but I downloaded his code for sensitivity analysis (sensanl.m and two supporting .m files) mentioned in section 7.3.2, and consider the code to be poorly written. If I didn't have Dorf & Bishop's "Modern Control Systems, 9th Edition" to fall back on, I would have been in dire straights getting anything beyond a cursory reading out of Khoo's text. In short, this book should command a price in the $50 to $60 range, not the stellar $110-120 its priced at. Dorf & Bishop is priced about the same and delivers three times the value that Khoo does. Every chapter where I made an effort to get to the bottom of some discussion, I found Khoo's exposition wanting. The index is exasperatingly useless. There are only two entries under 'H', one under 'K', one under 'W', etc. That's alarming for a book with 307 pages.