When AOE 3rd ED to be published?

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Costas Vlachos <c-X-vlachos@hot-X-

For example, if you try to find a positive integer solution to this
equation:

x^2 - 991*y^2 = 1

you may find it really hard to find any, and may think/assume that no
solution exists.

There ought to be a law against Diophantine equations, anyway.(;-)

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Winfield Hill

But I have seen lots of complaints here. What can I say, does
this just illustrate the futility of creating a perfect index?

Yes, it is exceedingly difficult. A number of formal indexing systems
have been used. The IEC hard-copy catalogue of standards, in its later
years, used the KWIC system (Key Words in Context). This works by not
adopting as keywords, many words that anyone might reasonable use as a
keyword. For example, 'safety' is not a permitted keyword, so you can't
look up 'safety standards', or 'safety of television receivers'.

Standards catalogues seem to be particularly difficult. The British
Standards hard-copy is equally frustrating. Both organizations allow
plain text searches of their CD-ROM catalogues. Crude, but far more
effective.

I think the proposal to put an extended index and search facility on CD-
ROM is an excellent one. I suspect that the cost of doing so is not
unsupportable.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Spehro Pefhany <Spehro@Pefhany.?>

Good indexers are amazing human beings,

Bad ones, of which there seem to be quite a few, are also amazing, but I
reserve judgement on the species front.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Tom Del Rosso

In The C Programming Language, the index gives its own page number for
one word, but no others. (A program would not have thought of doing
that.)

Yes, that does look very much like a human frolic.

In standards writing, we often get requests for large numbers of cross-
references to other standards, which break up the text and are a
nightmare to check when the standards are amended or revised. I have
been tempted to give cross-references for 'The', 'A', 'is' etc..

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Bob Stephens <stephensyomamadigita

How do you feel about the "permutated index" so popular in the UNIX
world?

The lab steward at my school had a box labelled 'Drometers, hy, boys,
use, for the, of'. I think it was a sort of silent protest.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Terry Pinnell wrote...

Sheesh! We spent an entire summer on the it, and surely it's
far better than most other book indexes. It takes up 25 pages
of three-column fine print and has over 10,000 references with
about 4000 word entries. It even includes lots of words we
didn't write but thought someone else might use when seeking
the alternate word we did write.

I worry that we won't be able to do as well next time around.

But I have seen lots of complaints here. What can I say, does
this just illustrate the futility of creating a perfect index?

I rather expected you to say something like 'yes, we know, and we're
working on making it a lot better next time', which is why I didn't
attempt to justify my criticism. But here are some examples:

Omissions and search difficulties
---------------------------------
1. Astable

2. Bistable
(Yet 5 entries for Monostable)

3. AF
(I was looking for 'AF signal generator'. Nor under Signal generator')

4. AC Voltmeter
(Nor under Voltmeter)

5. Antenna

6. Aerial

7. ATU (antenna tuning unit)

8. Amplified zener

9. Alternate mode
(Yet I eventually found it well-covered in Appendix, page 1047)

10. Binary counter
(Yet there is an entry under Counter-Binary. This crops up quite
often. Sometimes, when looking up a two-word entry like xxx yyy, if I
get nothing under xxx yyy I might get something under yyy-xxx or
sometimes 'see yyy', or sometimes both, or sometimes neither. See #26
for more examples.)

11. Bootstrapped emitter follower
(Nor via Emitter follower)

12. CMOS/TTL interfacing
(Nor TTL/CMOS interfacing. But found a good ref under 'Interfacing
between digital logic'.)

13. Capacitor colour code
(e.g interpreting the voltage band)

14. Bandpass filter
(There *is* a reference, to page 59, but it's an exercise with no
solution. A fuller ref is found under Filter - bandpass)

15. Compression
(As in AGC)

16. LDR

17. Cadmium Sulphide

18. Photoresistor
(#16, 17. 18 all looking for something on this type of component. Nor
under Resistor-photoresistor, etc)

19. Capacitive reactance
(Reactance gave one ref, to page 29, which then needed a good read)

20. Class B amplifier

21. Class AB amplifier

22. Class C amplifier
(Yet Class A amplifier is included. Nor under Amplifier)

23. Coils

24. Coil winding

25. Constant current

26. Constant current source
(Under 'Current - source' there's 'see current mirror, current
source'; then there's another separate entry, outside the 'Current'
block, under 'Current source'. As mentioned, treatment of these
multiple-word entries is inconsistent. For example, in contrast, the
entity 'current spikes' can be found under 'Current - spikes', not as
a separate entry like 'Current limit' or 'Current gain' or 'Current
monitor'. And it can also be found conveniently under 'Spikes -
current'. But many others can't.)

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

In John Woodgate typed:

The lab steward at my school had a box labelled 'Drometers, hy, boys,
use, for the, of'. I think it was a sort of silent protest.

"Hydrometers for the use of boys"?

 

[Bob Stephens]

Nice one! Easy to find a counterexample though... In mathematics there are
cases where a counterexample can be very difficult to find, and this can
lead to false assumptions.

For example, if you try to find a positive integer solution to this
equation:

x^2 - 991*y^2 = 1

you may find it really hard to find any, and may think/assume that no
solution exists. But you'll be wrong... There are infinitely many... The
smallest one is the pair

x = 379,516,400,906,811,930,638,014,896,080
y = 12,055,735,790,331,359,447,442,538,767

Intuition can be a good thing as long as it is backed by rigorous proof. The
word "obvious" is a very dangerous one, especially in mathematics.

Costas

One of my favorite quotes comes from the movie "PI"

"If you lose your scientific rigor, you are no longer a mathematician. You
are merely a numerologist."

Bob

 

[Costas Vlachos]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Costas Vlachos <c-X-vlachos@hot-X-


There ought to be a law against Diophantine equations, anyway.(;-)

It started with a Diophantine equation, and took mathematicians 300 years to
prove Fermat's Last Theorem, and the proof is so long that you can wtite a
book just to explain it in a language that only a few top mathematicians can
understand today...

Costas

 

[Wouter van Ooijen]

Sheesh! We spent an entire summer on the it, and surely it's

far better than most other book indexes.

Sorry, I don't know of any good-enough book to compare it to

But you say one summer, how does that compare to the time you spent on
the rest of the book?

My example: I needed a positive-rail current mirror (to convert an A?D
output to a 4-20mA source). The index mentions pages 111 953, 105, but
not 181 with the (opamp-transitor) circuit I needed. The frustration
was that I knew the circuit was in there somewhere, but going through
all 1k+ pages is a pain.

BTW the p181 circuit is called a current source, but is not mentioned
in by the 'current source' entry either.

But don't take me wrong - I have recommended this book to just about
everyone who wants to get involved in electronics.


Wouter van Ooijen

-- ------------------------------------
http://www.voti.nl
PICmicro chips, programmers, consulting

 

[Jim Thompson]

Sorry, I don't know of any good-enough book to compare it to

But you say one summer, how does that compare to the time you spent on
the rest of the book?

My example: I needed a positive-rail current mirror (to convert an A?D
output to a 4-20mA source). The index mentions pages 111 953, 105, but
not 181 with the (opamp-transitor) circuit I needed. The frustration
was that I knew the circuit was in there somewhere, but going through
all 1k+ pages is a pain.

BTW the p181 circuit is called a current source, but is not mentioned
in by the 'current source' entry either.

But don't take me wrong - I have recommended this book to just about
everyone who wants to get involved in electronics.


Wouter van Ooijen

-- ------------------------------------
http://www.voti.nl
PICmicro chips, programmers, consulting

I've also run across some incorrect page numbers in the index... just
off by a few pages... like an earlier edition index used with the
newer edition.

(Win, If I stumble across those again, I'll advise where they are.)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Wouter van Ooijen]

I think all the examples on that page are 'no-brainers',

Last week I saw someone attempting a variation of p389-F, but he did
ask for assistance because he did not trust his design. A good first
sign


Wouter van Ooijen

-- ------------------------------------
http://www.voti.nl
PICmicro chips, programmers, consulting

 

[Winfield Hill]

Wouter van Ooijen (www.voti.nl wrote...

Last week I saw someone attempting a variation of p389-F, but he did
ask for assistance because he did not trust his design. A good first
sign

Dan Marshall just pointed out to me that NSC's LMC6462 datasheet,
bottom first page, has an innocent-looking page 258 fig F howler.

http://www.national.com/ds.cgi/LM/LMC6462.pdf

Thanks,
- Win

whill_at_picovolt-dot-com

 

[Winfield Hill]

Terry Pinnell wrote...

I rather expected you to say something like 'yes, we know, and we're
working on making it a lot better next time', which is why I didn't
attempt to justify my criticism. But here are some examples:

Omissions and search difficulties
---------------------------------
1. Astable

2. Bistable
(Yet 5 entries for Monostable)

3. AF
(I was looking for 'AF signal generator'. Nor under Signal generator')

4. AC Voltmeter
(Nor under Voltmeter)

5. Antenna

6. Aerial

7. ATU (antenna tuning unit)

8. Amplified zener

9. Alternate mode
(Yet I eventually found it well-covered in Appendix, page 1047)

10. Binary counter
(Yet there is an entry under Counter-Binary. This crops up quite
often. Sometimes, when looking up a two-word entry like xxx yyy, if I
get nothing under xxx yyy I might get something under yyy-xxx or
sometimes 'see yyy', or sometimes both, or sometimes neither. See #26
for more examples.)

11. Bootstrapped emitter follower
(Nor via Emitter follower)

12. CMOS/TTL interfacing
(Nor TTL/CMOS interfacing. But found a good ref under 'Interfacing
between digital logic'.)

13. Capacitor colour code
(e.g interpreting the voltage band)

14. Bandpass filter
(There *is* a reference, to page 59, but it's an exercise with no
solution. A fuller ref is found under Filter - bandpass)

15. Compression
(As in AGC)

16. LDR

17. Cadmium Sulphide

18. Photoresistor
(#16, 17. 18 all looking for something on this type of component. Nor
under Resistor-photoresistor, etc)

19. Capacitive reactance
(Reactance gave one ref, to page 29, which then needed a good read)

20. Class B amplifier

21. Class AB amplifier

22. Class C amplifier
(Yet Class A amplifier is included. Nor under Amplifier)

23. Coils

24. Coil winding

25. Constant current

26. Constant current source
(Under 'Current - source' there's 'see current mirror, current
source'; then there's another separate entry, outside the 'Current'
block, under 'Current source'. As mentioned, treatment of these
multiple-word entries is inconsistent. For example, in contrast, the
entity 'current spikes' can be found under 'Current - spikes', not as
a separate entry like 'Current limit' or 'Current gain' or 'Current
monitor'. And it can also be found conveniently under 'Spikes -
current'. But many others can't.)

Thanks, Terry for that great list. While I suspect a few of the things
on your list aren't in the book (e.g. Coils and Coil winding?), it's a
very useful list. Gulp!

Thanks,
- Win

whill_at_picovolt-dot-com

 

[Fred Bloggs]

Wouter van Ooijen (www.voti.nl wrote...



Dan Marshall just pointed out to me that NSC's LMC6462 datasheet,
bottom first page, has an innocent-looking page 258 fig F howler.

http://www.national.com/ds.cgi/LM/LMC6462.pdf

Thanks,
- Win

whill_at_picovolt-dot-com

That's exactly what I mean- look for the dumb typo thing. If you like
this kind of thing then TI averages about 2-5 per page on everything.

 

[Winfield Hill]

Fred Bloggs wrote...

That's exactly what I mean- look for the dumb typo thing. If you like
this kind of thing then TI averages about 2-5 per page on everything.

Point taken. We'll add in a bunch of advanced subtle bad circuits.

Thanks,
- Win

whill_at_picovolt-dot-com

 

[Ben Bradley]

In sci.electronics.design, [email protected] (Wouter van Ooijen

One problem I just had is that, having gone through the circuits on
page 389, my eyes went to the previous page and I was trying to figure
out the problems with the ones on page 388... Finally I saw the
nonlinear resistive element in the upper lefthand corner of the page.

Actually I think the bad circuits sections encourage me to think.
After all, when a computer program or electronics circuit does not
work there is nobody around who will point you to the problem, so
finding what is wrong is a good training.

Actually there was one bad circuit that I could never 'debug'. For
this post I collected my copy and tried to find it. After some
searching (my main complaint is that the index is missing many
pointers!) I found it: p389 nr15. And now I immediately see that the

I presume you mean Circuit C, as John said. And if this is indeed
the Third Edition, please scan it and put it online to save Win and
Mr. Horowitz the trouble of having to update the Second Edition!
Also, if you could post a 'spoiler' before telling what's wrong so we
all have a chance to

On page 389,

Now you've got me looking through it - I read over p.389, and
looking back on p.259. Circuit H on 259 is essentially the same as
circuit G on page 389! Who is this engineer who made the same mistake
twice???




SPOILER, he tells what's wrong with the circuit...

... now let me catch up with this thread...

 

[Winfield Hill]

Ben Bradley wrote...

Now you've got me looking through it - I read over p.389, and
looking back on p.259. Circuit H on 259 is essentially the same
as circuit G on page 389! Who is this engineer who made the same
mistake twice???

Ackk!

Thanks,
- Win

whill_at_picovolt-dot-com

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Costas Vlachos <c-X-vlachos@hot-X-

It started with a Diophantine equation, and took mathematicians 300
years to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, and the proof is so long that you
can wtite a book just to explain it in a language that only a few top
mathematicians can understand today...

.... unless Fermat's marginal note was true!

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Costas Vlachos <c-X-vlachos@hot-X-

For example, if you try to find a positive integer solution to this
equation:

x^2 - 991*y^2 = 1

you may find it really hard to find any, and may think/assume that no
solution exists. But you'll be wrong... There are infinitely many... The
smallest one is the pair

x = 379,516,400,906,811,930,638,014,896,080
y = 12,055,735,790,331,359,447,442,538,767

I think that there are always infinitely many integer solutions to x^2 -
k*y^2 = 1, for k an integer > 0. So it would be much 'more wrong'
(because that's mathematics) to claim that there is no solution than to
fail to find it (because that's just arithmetic).