I'm curious to know how often you've encountered problems in a text book that you could not solve. I usually find a few, regardless of the subject, that I cannot solve no matter how many times I reread a chapter. I find it interesting because I feel like if you read the chapter you should be able to answer all the questions at the end. Thoughts?

 

I don't know that I've run across many that I couldn't solve, given enough time and effort. I've certainly had some that I decided were more trouble than I was willing to put into them, and so quit once I reached a point where I was pretty sure I knew how to go about it but just wasn't willing to continue. It's likely that some of those would have shown me that I was wrong. I've also had problems that I became convinced that the given answer was incorrect. Those I tend to hammer away at more thoroughly to be sure that I truly believe that and can defend that position. When practical, I contact the author or publisher on those so that they can be corrected. Occasionally I've had problems that I thought were wrong or that I was becoming convinced that I couldn't tackle but then realized that I was misreading the problem and that broke things open for me.

 

I'm curious to know how often you've encountered problems in a text book that you could not solve. I usually find a few, regardless of the subject, that I cannot solve no matter how many times I reread a chapter. I find it interesting because I feel like if you read the chapter you should be able to answer all the questions at the end. Thoughts?

Hello,

Ever since i was in grammar school i have found errors in books, mostly math books and technical books. This is even in well written and famous author books. Sometimes it is in the numerical results, sometimes in the graphs themselves.
On the web forget it as there have been many errors in formulas, graphs, and results.

I hate it too, but there's not much we can do about it except try to go back to the original theory that brought about the subject matter and try to generate the current theory all over again. Sometimes with simpler theories though we can just find another method to use, and that gives us a way to check our own results. If it's just a circuit then we can possibly use a simulator to check our results.

Another benefit you have is a forum like this one. You can post your problem here and people might be able to help. That can help you figure out how to do the problems you cant seem to solve right away.

 

One of the nice things about most engineering disciplines is that the correctness of an answer can be verified from the answer itself. It is rare that this is not the case. You should get in the habit of doing some kind of check on your results on as many of your problems as you can. Not only will this significantly improve your score because you will catch most of the silly math errors we all make, but it will serve you well once you are out in the "real world" when there is no one else to check your results and there are lots of lawyers waiting to pounce when you don't check your own.