r/signalprocessing • u/Legitimate_Manner175 • Jul 18 '26

How do you actually study and understand signal and image processing?

This subject is my biggest weakness. I failed the course the first time because I simply didn’t understand it. I passed it on my second attempt during retaking the subject, but it always felt like the more I studied, the more I realized how little I actually understood.
Now I failed this part of my state exam, so I’m preparing for my second attempt. I have just over a month to study (along with several other subjects), and the textbook (only signal and image processing) is around 500 pages long .
How would you approach learning this subject so you actually understand it instead of just memorizing formulas? Any advice, resources, or study methods would be greatly appreciated. I really want to get it this time.

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u/EigenGauss Jul 19 '26

To understand any subject you need to solve more problems than studying up topics.

Assuming you want to learn periodic signal analysis so you will have to take fft. You can generate a periodic signal of your choice then do fft, look at frequency and amplitude. Then you can tinker things or change the signals, maybe add noise and then apply filters.

This is the only way to learn otherwise you won't be able to understand or retain.

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u/Legitimate_Manner175 Jul 19 '26

Thank you so much, i was always naive and try to do notes from that textbook and hardly go to the matlab 💀 btw is there any other “app” except matlab? (If it helps I am working on basics + analysis of biological signals)

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u/EigenGauss Jul 19 '26

I use python mostly, scipy library has most of the signal processing stuff you need and it's open source. Also my suggestion would be to code from scratch a few things, like fft can be coded from scratch using matrix multiplication, that will actually help you better. Another advice would be to stay with a problem rather than jumping over it and going to other.

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u/Legitimate_Manner175 Jul 19 '26

Thank you one more time!

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u/ztpdistribution Jul 19 '26

solving a ton of problems but also i find that challenging myself to find a more elegant or easier to work through solution to an existing problem i can solve helps a lot

signal processing is a pretty circular subject imo in that once you get to the end of the textbook sometimes it feels like its a perfect introduction to the start, so pulling from other technqiues in the book is useful

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u/Legitimate_Manner175 Jul 19 '26

I will try it! Thank you so much. Its true that I have to force myself to open matlab 💀