Back in School

I just finished the third week of my class in digital signal processing. Like my earlier classes, this is online through extension with the anteaters.

First I will address a problem I had with the grading of exercises for the class. The syllabus dated for the Spring quarter said there were weekly homework assignments. A post in the online system said the homework was for our own practice. A third source implied the homework would not be graded and even gave a breakdown of how much of the grade would be the term paper and how much the final (these two numbers were different from the syllabus and added up to 100%).

A couple of weeks into the class, I noticed some of the other students had submitted assignments. I wanted to clear up this point so I asked the instructor. He said the assignments needed to be turned in and would be graded. To get all this work done, I have spent the last week doing three weeks worth of work.

I have been having other problems with the class. Z transforms are not my friend. I am supposed to understand them with little explanation, be able to do them, and then look them up in a table if I ever need to use them in the future. When the section on z transforms ended I was happy. Then I read the next section, inverse z transforms. It starts with a reassuring line, "The Inverse Z transform is a lot more complicated than the forward z transform."

The exercises and notes say to take the discrete Fourier transform on a signal, but then the fast Fourier transform function is called.

Remembering Things
Reading the textbook and lectures brought back many memories of my academic career. Some of the memories were less then helpful.

When I read about the Cauchy integral theorem I had flashbacks to Math 54 and the professor who often drew a big cat's paw on the board and sometimes made noises like a tiger or some other ferocious animal. He always wore a plain black t-shirt, black pants, and black shoes. One time I was in the restroom before class and as he walked in he made a joke how he must be in the most popular room on campus. Then a minute later he made the same joke to the people next to him when he was washing his hands. While I enjoy remembering this, when I hear about the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality all I can remember is it is important and I did not properly understand it.

When I saw δ(n) I first thought it was the Dirac delta function. I was wrong. It is actually the unit sample sequence or unit impulse function, which are similar but less exciting.

In the next week I have to come up with an idea for a term paper. I am lacking ideas and most of what I found on Google was either too far removed from the class or uninteresting. There are a couple of interesting ideas, but I need to see if they are feasible for an entire paper, my skills, and time.