Mathematical techniques: An introduction for the engineering, physical, and mathematical sciences, Second Ed

International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education, Jul 1998 by Hookings, Alistair

Mathematical Techniques: an introduction for the engineering, physical, and mathematical sciences, Second Ed. D.W. JORDAN and P. SMITH (Oxford University Press, 1997, 788 pp., (L)15.95)

This book gives a comprehensive and clear introduction to the mathematics required for the early stages of an undergraduate course in Electrical and Electronic engineering. Improvements on the first edition include the new material: the z transform, the Fourier transform, extension in vectors, additional applications of graph theory, and three chapters on probability, random variables and descriptive statistics, most of which is a welcome addition from the perspective of electrical engineering students.

The style is relatively dry, and the examples and problems are mostly theoretical, rather than applied to electrical or electronic engineering. Nonetheless it is a useful text with succinct explanations, and would prove a useful supplement to lectures or could act as good revision material, with plenty of exercises for anyone self-motivated enough to try them.

There is a section of Applications projects using symbolic computing which are mostly able to be approached using built-in commands in Mathematica, MATLAB, or similar packages, rather than programming in these environments. These "application projects" are still abstract in nature, rather than applied to a particular context, but should be helpful in giving the user an understanding of some of the issues involved in the problem at hand, and hopefully thus a better grasp of the mathematics underlying it.

It is doubtful whether this text is more useful than Engineering Mathematics by Croft, Davison and Hargreaves, which has a distinct slant towards electrical and electronic engineering, but it may be a useful supplement for students desiring to see a different approach to the same material. It does provide useful resource material for lecturers.

ALISTAIR HOOKINGS Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Manukau Institute of Technology, New Zealand