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| favourite technical books |
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| armandine2:
--- Quote from: Smokey on February 18, 2023, 08:15:47 pm ---How many of you have already bought at least one book after someone mentioned it in this thread? --- End quote --- I got a second edition of Ramo et al and the GE Transistor Manual :palm: |
| pdenisowski:
--- Quote from: IdahoMan on February 19, 2023, 08:58:25 am ---I'm thinking of getting an ARRL Handbook of a good year. --- End quote --- I usually buy the latest copy every few years, but mostly just as a way to support the league :) The content does change from year to year and I do think they are getting better over time, but I think any edition from the previous 10 years doesn't differ much from the current edition in terms of basic content. In my opinion, the ARRL handbook, and many of their other publications, are some of the best resources for electronics hobbyists. The RSGB books are also nice, but I think they tend to be more focused on the builder / experimenter (i.e. people who already have some experience in electronics) |
| pdenisowski:
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on February 20, 2023, 12:19:42 am ---Book prices are crazy today. --- End quote --- College textbooks and "professional" books (like Artech House) have never been cheap. What's crazy now is that the used book market is drying up: I used to be able to pick up older (current edition -1 or -2) electronics books for just a few dollars, and now they are often priced almost the same as a new book! (This is true, in my experience, for non-technical books as well). --- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on February 20, 2023, 12:19:42 am ---But strangely enough old editions of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics and Machinery's Handbook are quite reasonable. --- End quote --- When I was in high-school, CRC used to sell new copies of the previous year's handbook at a steep discount (like, 80-90% off) to students. Still have my copy :) |
| TimFox:
Back when the publisher was still called "The Chemical Rubber Co.", we nicknamed their Handbook "The Rubber Bible". |
| CatalinaWOW:
--- Quote from: pdenisowski on February 20, 2023, 02:56:05 pm ---When I was in high-school, CRC used to sell new copies of the previous year's handbook at a steep discount (like, 80-90% off) to students. Still have my copy :) --- End quote --- Yeah, they were doing that in my day also, and I still have my copy. A bit shop worn, but still useful and sometimes quicker than Google. The two books to the right of the Chemical Bible are worth discussing. I have found the Handbook of Mathematical Functions extremely useful. Tables of values allow checking accuracy of functions in libraries I am using and also anything I am generating. And rational approximations allow quick computations when appropriate. The Handbook of Physics on the other hand has been a complete bust for me. Don't know if the book is fundamentally flawed, or if my brain is too aligned to the engineering side of things but I have gotten little value out of it. Too bad, since I paid full price for that one. The next picture shows a group of old handbooks I have acquired, some in the last year. They, along with a 30th addition CRC have all cost just a few dollars. The next pictures show some of the harder hitting parts of my bookshelves. Almost all of the books in the pictures are used regularly. A few are worth special mention. In the first picture, Numerical Methods is a fine book to understand numerical differentiation and integration, how they are applied in simulation and how quantization error can be propagated and how it can be minimized. In the second picture, Discrete Techniques in Parameter Estimation by Jerry Mendel has proved far more useful than I ever dreamed when I took the course. The world is seldom so kind as to provide you with noise and error free data, or with simple linear behavior. Having tools to deal with it is widely useful. |
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