Principles of Electronic Instrumentation, Third Edition

Rating:
Summary: God outdid himself when he made Brian Holton.
Review: Hey man, it's José. Brian is the author man; he's a genius. This book was one of the most comprehensive reviews of electronic instrumentation that I have ever read.The diagrams were beautiful, and the lectures informative. The solutions, while often inaccurate, provide for healthy classroom discussion. Holton definitely knew what he was doing when he did that. You couldn't fool me Brian! Anyway, I recommend this book to any teacher. ¡Cinco estrellas! ¡Olé!

Rating:
Summary: Good as a Reference, Bad as a Teacher
Review: I haven't tackled many of the problems, so I can't speak to the overabundance of typos that everybody else is complaining about, nor the quality of selection of the problems. I can say that this book presents a very organized review of a wide range of well-chosen topics. If you already have a decent understanding, it's an excellent reference. However, I find that whenever I come across a topic in which I need instruction right from the beginning, this book is almost always way too terse to be of any use.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly Error Ridden, Little Support
Review: I used this book in my undergraduate career as a physics and math major. I took Electronics Instrumentation as an elective because I genuinely wanted to learn the material, but I was sorely disappointed in the text. Besides being riddled with typos and errors, I found that the book was of no use as far as giving solutions (or even answers!) to any of the problems at the ends of the chapters. Additionally, I used the lab manual that accompanies the text, and it was equally error-ridden and unsupportive. It was as though no one ever proofed the texts prior to publication. Overall I think that with some editing, added solutions, and attention to student feedback this book could be a good resource as it covers a broad range of topics, but as it stands it is lacking.

Rating:
Summary: A little pricey
Review: The book seems poorly edited, the presentation of the basic material is too short (a large portion of this book is data sheets), much of the mateial in the exercises at the ends of the chapters is not discussed in the text, and there ar no solutions provided. On the other hand, the book does some good in its short and to-the-point explanations of some basic to intemediate ideas in modern electronics, and it is up-to-date. I would not reccomend this book for self study, but it should work fairly well for an introductory course at the undergraduate level- as long as the instructor covers the material left out of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Great, but with feet of clay
Review: The text is exceptionally well organized, and does a marvelous job of covering a complex and rapidly changing field for the uninitiated. It is, however, sorely in need of a good proofreading by someone who knows the material. The difference between "R2/R1 + 2R2" and the correct "R2/(R1+2R2)" (P.227) could drive a student to drink. A table comparing octal and decimal numbers has the heading switched (P.253), reference is made to negative temperatures - in Kelvin! - and so forth. This really interferes with the learning process (I got an A, by the way).

Rating:
Summary: Confusing
Review: The way in which some of the sections are presented is much more complicated than they have to be in this book. It also has a tendency to give you problems that it hasn't taught in the section, expecting you to understand the concept from the limited information in the question. The only thing I really like about this book is that all the answers are in the back, not just the even or the odd.