Engineering and math

[[email protected]]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts. Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

 

[Studio271]

nah... I understand and appreciate the math, but I can't stand seeing
it as anything beyond a tool for computing, say, the gain of an
operational amplifier across a band of frequencies. Anything beyond
that, and it's just an exercise in understanding something that will
only be used to program a simulator.

-Drew

 

[Homer J Simpson]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts. Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

Yes. There is no engineering without math - just guesswork. We aren't
cathedral builder from the middle ages.

 

[mark]

[email protected] wrote:
Don't worry. I think most engineers have the same feelings to some extent.
I know I do. (But it is neat when some math you barely remember solves the
problem.

M Walter

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Yes. There is no engineering without math - just guesswork. We aren't
cathedral builder from the middle ages.

Before, before my American friend.

Middle Age is approximately at 1300 to 1600.



~870, the first mentionable 'Dome' in Cologne.

'The' Cologne Dome started approx. 1000-1100 and ended (never ended,
though) about 1760. With many festivals (part finishings, gotic chorus
in 1322 for example) in between all that time.




Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Eeyore]

Yes. There is no engineering without math - just guesswork. We aren't
cathedral builder from the middle ages.

Those cathedral builders knew a thing or two actually.

Graham

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Those cathedral builders knew a thing or two actually.

True, but they built by experience - sometimes terrible experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral

"About 10 years ago it was discovered that the Flying Buttresses on the east
end were no longer connected to the adjoining stonework and repairs were
made to prevent collapse. The most recent problem was the discovery that the
stonework of the Dean's Eye window in the transept was crumbling. It has now
been replaced, but there was a period of great angst when it emerged that
the stonework only needed to shift 5mm for the entire cathedral to
collapse."

Equally there have been a number of modern collapses where what looked solid
failed - often due to errors of math or failures to calculate the correct
structure design.

 

[Tim Wescott]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts. Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

Many EE's are highly effective even though they don't spend much time
with the math. There's a lot of craft in EE.

-- and I _like_ the math and IMHO I'm pretty good at it, so it's not
like I'm trying to bolster my own position, or anything.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

 

[David L. Jones]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

Not at all. Most practical design engineers will avoid complex math if
at all possible.

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts.
Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

I don't think so.
A good majority of real world electronics engineering design does not
need complex math. Triple integrals or other nasty squiggly lines in
complex equations are fairly rare. For instance, I can't remember ever
having to solve an integral since doing math at uni, but it's important
to understand the concepts and be able to relate them to practical
situations.

Of course, it all depends on the industray you are in. Some will use
complex math every day, but for your everyday design work basic math
will get you through - logs, trig functions, basic equations (often
with mechanical aspects), complex numbers occasionally etc

Dave

 

[John Larkin]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts. Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

Academic "engineers" love complex math, calculus and stuff. As a
working circuit designer, I don't use calculus at all (except in
understanding the basic concepts, integration and differentiation and
differential equations aka closed loops) and could mostly get by with
a 4-function calculator with square root. A little basic algebra is
handy. For anything really complex and nonlinear - and everything is
nonlinear - simulation is the way to go. A good feel for signal
processing - Fouriers, convolution, mixing and modulation, stuff like
that, is invaluable, but "feel" is usually enough.

Design is an emotional, qualitative activity, and analysis is an
intellectual, quantitative activity, and Spice can do most of your
analysis for you. So get that degree somehow and get out in the real
world and design real stuff. Send me a resume.

John

 

[Eeyore]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts. Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

Don't fret real engineers use less math than you might think.

As long as you're ok with complex numbers and can handle simple integration
and differentiation you'll be fine. Programs like Mathcad can do a lot of
the tricky stuff these days anyway.

Graham

 

[[email protected]]

Academic "engineers" love complex math, calculus and stuff. As a
working circuit designer, I don't use calculus at all (except in
understanding the basic concepts, integration and differentiation and
differential equations aka closed loops) and could mostly get by with
a 4-function calculator with square root. A little basic algebra is
handy. For anything really complex and nonlinear - and everything is
nonlinear - simulation is the way to go. A good feel for signal
processing - Fouriers, convolution, mixing and modulation, stuff like
that, is invaluable, but "feel" is usually enough.

Design is an emotional, qualitative activity, and analysis is an
intellectual, quantitative activity, and Spice can do most of your
analysis for you.

Indeed, a lot of practical engineering is more seat-of-the-pants math
in terms of understanding the implications rather than doing
complicated problems as they were done in school. You need to know
what it is going to look like, but you can resort to the computer for
the actual numbers.

That is, assuming someone's already written the software, and that you
have it available. Ironically, I do more "engineering math" in support
of hobbies than I do for "work"... things like machining parts for
musical instruments, or arguing about movements in ballroom dancing -
when there aren't textbook methods to resort to and you are exploring a
new field with methods borrowed from another, then you end up deriving
(or rederiving) a lot of things from basic relationships.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

nah... I understand and appreciate the math, but I can't stand seeing
it as anything beyond a tool for computing, say, the gain of an
operational amplifier across a band of frequencies. Anything beyond
that, and it's just an exercise in understanding something that will
only be used to program a simulator.

If you want to be a "cookbook engineer," sure, I'd agree -- and there are
plenty of jobs for such people. If you actually want to be a *circuit
designer*, no way -- you at least have to have an understanding of the
somewhat more complex math that governs active devices, filters, etc. If you
look at the work of well-known designers such as Bob Widlar (as in current
source), Gilbert (as in mixer), Bob Pease ("bandgap czar"), etc., it's clear
that -- no, they're not using finite field theory or something equally
esoteric, but it's definitely some solid undergraduate math... bits and pieces
of calculus, Laplace transforms (or Z transforms for discrete time),
sensitivity calculations, etc.

There are many ways to be highly creative in, say, digital logic or software
design that requires pretty much zero math... although even there, if you're
called upon to make something really fast or complex, the math comes back (the
folks who design the math co-processors for CPUs do some pretty heavy lifting,
for instance, and the search routines in Google require a solid grounding in
undergraduate linear algebra to understand -- your average programmer wouldn't
have a clue how to make Google as fast as it is...).

 

[David L. Jones]

Academic "engineers" love complex math, calculus and stuff. As a
working circuit designer, I don't use calculus at all (except in
understanding the basic concepts, integration and differentiation and
differential equations aka closed loops) and could mostly get by with
a 4-function calculator with square root.

Yep, I always laugh at engineers with their fancy programmable
calculators as I watch them struggle to do their day-to-day maths
problems, the most complex of which is usually calculating a parallel
resistor value. Fancy stuff like square roots only come up about 10% of
the time :->

My programmable calculators batteries have run dry *twice* since I last
used it, it just sits in the cupboard gathering dust.

Dave

 

[[email protected]]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts. Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

What, you don't love triple integrals? ;-0

Welcome to the club. I never could figure out what Sturm-Liouville
theory in Partial Differential Equations class was all about, either.
(Can't think of the last time I needed to use it, either.)

Michael

 

[Sven Wilhelmsson]

What, you don't love triple integrals? ;-0

Welcome to the club. I never could figure out what Sturm-Liouville
theory in Partial Differential Equations class was all about, either.
(Can't think of the last time I needed to use it, either.)

Michael

Well, if you use a straight wire you should know its impedance.
Go to my page to find why and then read more on the Bessel functions and
Sturm-Liouville theory.

All who use a straight wire should know its impedance
Ok, I'm just joking! ... , or maybe not ...

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

Yes. There is no engineering without math - just guesswork. We aren't
cathedral builder from the middle ages.

That's because Engineers cheat with math in order to get results The
cathedral builders used maths for others to get a result long after they
retired - they used simulators.

Visiting Barcelona I learned that the spanish architect Gaudi used string
computing to calculate the placement of arches and pillars:

Real, physical, strings with scaled weights attached at important points along
the string. The model would be inverted so he placed a mirror underneath to
display the results of the simulation. I think that the string model must be the
equal of a fairly decent computer running for a long time.

Gaudi robably learned that trick from the Cathedral builders.

 

[David L. Jones]

Well, if you use a straight wire you should know its impedance.
Go to my page to find why and then read more on the Bessel functions and
Sturm-Liouville theory.

All who use a straight wire should know its impedance
Ok, I'm just joking! ... , or maybe not ...

http://home.swipnet.se/swi/bessel/bessel.html
I've got the name of a good psychologist who may be able to help you
;-)

In the time it would take to analyze that piece of wire in that way,
most practical engineers with their rules of thumb and orders of
magnitude could have designed an entire product!

Dave

 

[Deefoo]

True, but they built by experience - sometimes terrible experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral

"About 10 years ago it was discovered that the Flying Buttresses on the east
end were no longer connected to the adjoining stonework and repairs were
made to prevent collapse. The most recent problem was the discovery that the
stonework of the Dean's Eye window in the transept was crumbling. It has now
been replaced, but there was a period of great angst when it emerged that
the stonework only needed to shift 5mm for the entire cathedral to
collapse."

You blame their limited math skills for defects in a 600-year old cathedral?

--DF

 

[Fred Bloggs]

I'm an EE and taking classes for my Master's. And I am again realizing
my distaste for math. I don't hate it, I just really struggle with it.
Is this weird?

I have always really enjoyed designing and building electronic things,
and even daydream about it. I analyze everything beyond what I believe
is normal, and am always trying to figure out better/easier ways to do
things, and I'm employed as an engineer. Yet anything beyond
high-school level math drives me nuts. Is it an oxymoron to like
engineering but look at a complex math problem like it's written in
Chinese?

What are you calling a "complex math problem?" You don't need much math
for electronic engineering if you work at low level applications, so I
wouldn't be worried about it. And then again, just because something is
amenable to a mathematical representation does not necessarily mean it's
reasonable, realistic, or useful, nor does it imply you have an answer.
Also, most of the mathematical presentation at the master's level is
just so much immature junk.