Having become accustomed to clicking icons on a simulator to get fast readings of average and rms values, power values etc we were startled to find that we could not easily compute effective and/or average values of arbitrary waveforms to crosscheck simulation results. So we decided it was time to re-visit the so called ” text book ” definitions and see what we come up with and re-educate ourselves. It is often the bare essentials that seem to trip us up sometimes. So after a fairly close look we documented, in a workbook fashion, our findings, just in case we need them from time to time. This little report is available on our website under engineer’s corner/engineering pages. For interested readers it is located at www.signalpro.biz.