Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Study Aid Review: Schaum's Outline of Advanced Mathematics for Engineers and Scientists

 


This is not really a book that is tied to any one specific course like the other Schaum's outlines are. This is meant to be more like a reference where you can go to look up concepts that you may have forgotten. It is like a condensed textbook that has the key things that you need to know but does not go into a lot of detail about the theory and do a bunch of proofs as a textbook will. Let's face it, we all forget things from class after a while, especially things that we do not use on a regular basis. Most people will be able to remember how to take simple derivatives or integrals, but far fewer people are going to remember how to set up a triple integral or do Laplace Transforms off the top of their heads after they get done with the classes where they have to use them. That is where this will come in handy.

I think the best way to use any of the Schaum's outlines is to use them in conjunction with learning the concepts in class (because they give you far more examples worked out than your book ever will) or as a reference guide once a class is over. At that point, you can use it as a substitute for your textbook because you will not be as likely to need all the detail and rigor of a full-blown textbook by then. It is not something that is going to be useful to teach yourself the concepts from initially. That is because of the lack of detail and the fact that some of the outlines are edited badly and can contain errors. Once you understand the material the errors and typos can be easy to spot, but when you are first learning that is not always the case. I have only glanced through this particular outline so far, so I am not sure how many errors (if any) are in this one. I know some of the outlines have more errors than others, but just be aware if something does not look right when you are working through a problem, it may not be that you don't know what you are doing.

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