Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers

Hardcover edition of Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers.

February 27, 2021 Uncategorized , , , ,

I was invited to Kindle Direct Publishing‘s hardcover beta program, and have made my geometric algebra book available in black and white hardcover.

As always, the PDF, leanpub edition, and latex sources are also available.

I thought that it was too confusing to have color and black-and-white editions of the book (color has a significantly higher printing cost), so I have unpublished the color editions of the book (softcover, and hardcover). There is one copy of the color edition left, and once that is sold, it will show as out of print.

Some nice positive feedback for my book.

October 31, 2020 math and physics play , , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s a fun congratulatory email that I received today for my Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers book

Peeter ..
I had to email to congratulate you on your geometric algebra book. Like yourself, when I came across it, I was totally blown away and your book, being written from the position of a discoverer rather than an expert, answers most of the questions I was confronted by when reading Doran and Lasenby’s book.
You’re a C++ programmer and from my perspective, when using natural world math, you are constructing a representation of a problem (like code does) except many physicists do not recognize this. They’re doing physics with COBOL (or C with classes!).
congratulations
.. Reader
I couldn’t resist pointing out the irony of his COBOL comment, as my work at LzLabs is now heavily focused on COBOL (and PL/I) compilers and compiler runtimes.  You could say that my work, at work or at play, is all an attempt to transition people away from the evils of legacy COBOL.
For reference the Doran and Lasenby book is phenomenal work, but it is really hard material.  To attempt to read this, you’ll need a thorough understanding of electromagnetism, relativity, tensor algebra, quantum mechanics, advanced classical mechanics, and field theory.  I’m still working on this book, and it’s probably been 12 years since I bought it.  I managed to teach myself some of this material as I went, but also took most of the 4th year UofT undergrad physics courses (and some grad courses) to fill in some of the gaps.
When I titled my book, I included “for Electrical Engineers” in the title.  That titling choice was somewhat derivative, as there were already geometric algebra books “for physicists”,  and “for computer science“.  However, I thought it was also good shorthand for the prerequisites required for the book as “for Electrical Engineers” seemed to be good shorthand for “for a student that has seen electromagnetism in its div, grad, curl form, and doesn’t know special relativity, field theory, differential forms, tensor algebra, or other topics from more advanced physics.”
The relativistic presentation of electromagnetism in Doran and Lasenby, using the Dirac algebra (aka Space Time Algebra (STA)), is much more beautiful than the form that I have used in my book.  However, I was hoping to present the subject in a way that was accessible, and provided a stepping stone for the STA approach when the reader was ready to tackle a next interval of the “learning curve.”

A price increase for Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers

May 28, 2020 Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers , , , ,

As of this week (end of May 2020), I raised the price of the black and white version of my Geometric Algebra book slightly (from $12 to $14.50 USD).  I say slightly, despite the 17% price increase, because the price is still pretty low from an absolute value perspective, as the markup I’d added to the minimum price was fairly small.  This price increase was an experiment in response to a reseller (SuperBookDeals) buying copies at $12 and then reselling them at higher prices.  For some reason amazon lists the higher price reseller copies before their own kindle-direct-publishing version, so a buyer had to go out of their way to find the lowest priced version.

I wouldn’t care if resellers undercut my list price, and then got a preferential listing from amazon.  The fact that this reseller doesn’t play this game with the color version of the book, which has a much higher printing cost (I haven’t changed my price for that, and am still selling it for $40 USD), suggests to me that I’d set the price too low for the black and white version.

If you are interested in a copy of the book, but don’t like the new higher price, please note that the (color) PDF version is still available for free.

I may drop the price back to the original $12 later, but for now I’m going to charge $14.50, and am curious to see how the pricing game plays out.

Note that a temporary side effect of me having changed the price is that SuperBookDeals appears to have dropped their price of one of their listings below $12 (my original price) to clear out their stock. Amazon also appears to be offering a couple copies at the old $12 price, which now lists as a sale price.

 

My collection of Peeter Joot physics paperbacks

May 22, 2020 math and physics play , , , , , , , ,

I ordered a copy of my old PHY456 Quantum Mechanics II notes for myself, and it arrived today!  Here it is with it’s buddies (Grad QM and QFT):

With the shipping cost from the US to Canada (because I’m now paying for amazon prime anyways) it’s actually cheaper for me to get a regular copy than to order an author proof, so this time I have no “not for resale” banding.

This little stack of Quantum notes weighs in at about 1050 pages, and makes a rather impressive pile.  There’s a lot of info there, for the bargain price of either free or about $30 USD, depending on whether you want a PDF or print copy of this set.  Of course, most people want neither, and get all their quantum mechanics through osmosis from the engineering of the microchips and electronics in their phones and computers.

I have to admit that it’s a fun ego boost to see your name in print.  In order to maximize the ego boost, you can use my strategy and do large scale vanity press, making a multiple volume set for yourself.  Here’s my whole collection, which includes the bulk of my course notes, plus my little book:

Based on the height of the stack, I’d guess this is about 3000 pages total, the product of about 10 years of study and work.

Making these all available for free to anybody in PDF form surely cripples my potential physical copy sales volume, but that doesn’t matter too much since I’ve set the price so low that I only get a token payment for each copy anyways.  Based on linear extrapolation of my sales so far, I’ll recoup my tuition costs (not counting the opportunity cost of working part time while I took the courses) after another 65 years of royalties.

Finding the cheapest copy of my geometric algebra book on amazon

May 3, 2020 Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers , , ,

My book, “Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers” is available as a free PDF here on my website, but also available in color ($40) and black-and-white ($12) formats on amazon.  Both versions are basically offered close to cost, should the reader be like me, preferring a print copy that can be marked up.  In fact, I made it available initially just so that I could get a cheap bound copy for my own use that I could mark up myself.

I noticed today that amazon now hides the cheapest version of my book, and seems shows the price of a reseller first.  For example, if you click the link to the $12 black-and-white version, it now appears that the book is selling for $13.01

but if you click on “Other Sellers”, the kindle-direct (print on demand) version that amazon offers itself hides further down in the list of sellers.  The version that I’m selling directly through amazon.com is third on the list, despite it being the cheapest:

I guess that I’ve priced the black-and-white version of the book so low, that there are resellers that are willing to try to make some profit selling their own copies.  Do they depend on amazon giving them preferential listing order to make those sales?  I wonder how many of the people who have bought my book have ended up accidentally paying a higher price, using one of these resellers?

It does not appear that any resellers have played this game with the color version of the book, which has a higher price point.  I’m curious now to look at the sales stats for the two variations of the book to see how many of each version are selling (hardly any in either case, as the subject matter is too esoteric, but it was actually enough over the whole year that I did include the revenue on my income taxes.)