Structure and Interpretation of Signals and Systems

Rating:
Summary: Beware! Very confusing..
Review: I totally agree with the previous reviewer. This book is very confusing and full of errors, although it tries to be an introductory book on the topic. Try books from Oppenheim, if you really want to master signals and systems.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing, hard to use, full of errors
Review: This book is a terrible book. I found the book extremely frustrating to read and troublesome to use. When I first learned about signals and systems and used this book as a learning guide, I had a terrible time trying to understand the book. Some of the exercises even disagree with the books definition, and after taking an advanced systems and signals courses, I realized that the book is full of errors. For example, its definition of a memoryless system is completely wrong.

I've also tutored students who are using this book at UC Berkeley as the main class textbook. They have a difficult time understanding the book as well. If you want a good introduction to Signals and Systems, get "Signals and Systems" by Haykin and Van Veen instead of this book. That book does a much better job covering the topic and goes more in depth to cover advanced topics such as wavelets and z-transforms.

Rating:
Summary: Engineer's opinion
Review: This book is an extended version of the tutorial course given by the authors at UC Berkeley. It is a very well designed introduction into the most significant areas of the topic as seen by modern researchers and engineers.
The book provides a broad view of the subject and allows to feel the flavor of applications. It gives an overview of typical engineering problems involving signals and systems and indicates essential mathematical techniques for modeling them. Using these tools the authors present a coherent theory as a basis for engineering design.
The book is written in clear language thus making the subject, which is not simple, easy to understand. It is perfectly suitable for an inquisitive freshman who is willing to master the material by going through numerous examples and exercises. There is also a website, which provides access to additional tutorials, labs, interactive examples and useful links.
The scope of the book is such that there is hardly anything to add or delete, although, I believe it would certainly benefit from adding "further reading" sections at the end of each chapter.
Although, I am not a freshman but an engineer, I love this book, because it helped me to feel the joy of dealing with signals and systems and gave me a broader vision of the subject.