My self-study plan for electrical engineering

In phase 2 for analog circuits and DSP you should brush up on discrete math, calculus, and most importantly learn Laplace transforms . That’s the only thing I see missing.

I've wanted to do the same for a while now, but I'm unable to find a curriculum that lists the textbook for each subject.

It looks like the article author is just "guessing" textbooks. I'm browsing the U. Waterloo curriculum and it doesn't specify any books.

The article is still useful, don't get me wrong, but I would love to see a list of the textbooks that are actually used at a university program. I've Googled it many times and I only find the names of the courses.

I don't see any mathematics nor psychics books. During the first two years of our 5 year ECE degree we mainly did theoretical courses. Some examples: single variable analysis, multi variable analysis, differential equations, arithmetic analysis, algebra, mechanics, electronagnetism, waves.

All these were full semester courses. These courses were actually needed if somebody wanted to properly understand the whole theory of electrical engineering (signals, em transmission, antennas, microwaves, optical fibers, theory of electronics, electrical machines, electric power systems, etc).

Depending on which subject you want to focus on you may not need all these mathematics and physics but your will definitely need some theoretic knowledge to actually understand it!

Why push yourself through a degree-style path? So much of what EEs learn in their coursework is of low utility. (I'm a physicist who transitioned to working as an EE. I have never had a single EE course, and yet I find myself with no obvious deficits compared to my colleagues who have.)

There are two ways to learn an existing technical-ish subject: you can spend a lot of time reading textbooks, then do some projects (the "slow-fast" approach); or you can dive in to projects and refer to textbooks when you get stuck (the "start-stop" approach). In the slow-fast approach you will go slowly through a lot of textbooks for a long time, and then in theory you will be able to do projects very quickly once you are done. In the start-stop approach you will start a project, quickly get stuck and spend a while searching for and understanding the answer, then go back to your project.

In my opinion electrical engineering, being a subject where fast feedback is generally possible, is very well suited to project-first learning. I would recommend grabbing a few textbooks (Horowitz and Hill's Art of Electronics holding pole position for a practically-oriented learner, in my opinion), reading their introductory material (table of contents, preface, etc.; enough that you know what each book has in it), and then setting all the books aside until you need them. Avoid books targeted at "makers"; most are fine but a sizeable fraction are written by people with no clue what they are doing, and they will actively set you back. (It is very difficult to learn from an author who does not themself understand the subject, and all the worse if they do not realize that they do not understand. Since there are plenty of better sources out there, it's little trouble to just avoid the whole class.)

Trying to work on brain-computer interfaces is challenging because it blends biology with electrical engineering. The biology will naturally drive things, because you cannot really control it like you can the electronics. So learning EE in this context is about two things: 1) What can I do with circuits? and 2) What do organisms behave like and respond to electrically? Your project is then using your knowledge of circuits to solve R&D problems relating to bioelectric signals.

This isn't easy (I think you know that), but the benefit is that you can quit with "just" EE skills and still come out ahead.

I thought about doing this a while back, but I quickly gave up. I don’t know if I’m just an idiot or something, but I quickly found my self way out of my league unable to understand a lot of the foundational theory and physics. I also picked up a handful of textbooks in the particular domains I’m interested in (boy were those expensive) and those were even worse, filled to the brim with notation I’ll never understand. Part of it is likely to my extremely poor math education in fairness.

I’ll add, I was somewhat surprised, given the explosion in MOOCs over the past few years, to find very few courses equivalent to introductory undergrad EE classes.