[Le Chaud Lapin]

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.

I actually became irate as I sat in a course on signal processing, and
when it came time (yet again) for Fourier transforms, and I said to
myself, "Ok, here goes...finally, I can sit back, relax, and let this
professor teach me what I am supposed to know already but actually
don't. Whatever you do, don't let him do that thing where he tries to
turn the whole class into a bunch of pattern monkeys.... Watch closely,
Gibbs phenomenon, the whole bit...be one with the Fourier...breathe the
Fourier..."

And in an instant, he went straight from 20-seconds of theory 20
minutes of cookbook rules on frequency-domain/time-domain mappings:
"Differentation in frequency domain is equivalent to ...."

I was furious.

My eyes began to well in utter frustration, and I finally blurted
out...

"When...oh when!!! ARE WE GOING TO ACTUALLY LEARN THIS STUF!! Anyone
can read a table, but is there no one ELSE here who feels like I do,
that they know a little but doesn't really KNOWWWW!!!!!..." My
classmates remained mostly silent, but some of them quietly nodded.
The professor stood speechless with his mouth open.

The teaching assistant came to the rescue by explaining that it was
pointless to try to *really* teach us, that one needs to study theory
of distributions first, and even then, it's still a matter of active
research. Our heads would pop (at least mine would have).

I never studied theory of distributions, so I still don't know what
Fourier transforms really are. But I do understand convulution and
filtering, and I am sure others will agree that, when you can explain
in simple terms at a birthday party why the TV needs to be tuned to
channel 3 or 4 to process the signal from the video recorder, it's a
good feeling.

I think forcing yourself to like the math is not a bad idea. The ratio
of career time to college time is a large number, especially if you
discount the non-technical courses that you were forced to take, and
you should keep this in mind. Study math in bite-size pieces, and tuck
each piece away as you conquer it. Learning on your own at a slower
pace is not the same as being force-fed in college.

If you finally master gamma functions at 50, so what? It's fun!

-Le Chaud Lapin-

 

[[email protected]]

At 18, I was diagnosted with severe dyscalcula, and dyslexia runs in my
familiy. My dad was a technician for a major defense contractor, and
the engineers ther did every thing they could starting when I was 12 or
so to make sure I would become a EE. Except check my math grades,
which were horrible. Well college comes along and NO way are you gonna
tell me I'm not gonna be a EE. Ruined my grades to the point they
wanted to kick me out. Was transfered to Education, have equvalent to a
masters in Social Studies.

Not that I hated teaching inner city kids, but...Guess what, when
the ed job fell out, I suddenly found myself back doing engineering.
Got promoted to Research Associate from Technician. I have 19 grad
students that depend on me for hardware and systems operation, and
keys to a 33 million dollar building including parts of it where the
sun dont shine. I have personal responsibility for more hardware then
I ever dreamed of, and while I need it from time to time, math is a
very small part of my day, except when I'm in the machine shop. 90% of
the circuit design gets done in my head with ohms law, the rest can be
modeled on paper, and the nasty 1% I set down with the boss or a
postdoc who love math. We make some pretty state of the art stuff, but
undertsnading how a RC charges or differntiates on a scope pretty much
does it, as well as assuming that life and just about everything in it
is a transmission line. I go home and play with waveguide at 10 ghz for
fun.

hang in there and learn the math, one of the things that clobbered me,
is I learned work arounds for what I needed to do when teh math hits
the fan. Oh, and if I'm debugging a filter design, I can usually
outguess the design software when I'm doing the curve fitting. Funny
thing, as you get older, the math starts to come to you as you need it.
I probably could go back and get my EE, but why, when the local IEEE
meets, I've been greeted as a near equal, once they find out I spent
years as a self employed field engineer.

Oh, and I do asics and asm on a daily basis. Fourier is a good friend.

hang in there,


Steve Roberts, BSED

 

[[email protected]]

please excuse my spelling in the above post, I'm in a real hurry this
morning and didnt proofread it.

Steve Roberts

 

[[email protected]]

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 ...

Ah, yes. J_0, Y_0, I_0, K_0. I remember those. Also erfc(eta) and
the infinite series of sines and cosines. Solutions to PDEs.

But Sturm-Liouville continues to elude me.

Also... what's the deal with (in)homogeneous boundary conditions? I
vaguely remember that inhomogeneous boundary conditions were Bad, and
*something* was done to render them homogeneous. (Was that why we had
to make them dimensionless?)

 

[John Fields]

Those cathedral builders knew a thing or two actually.

 

[TuT]

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?

I think one of the biggest problems for engineering students is that the
maths is too often taught in abstraction, which makes it difficult to
understand what the point is much of the time. In my experience, it's often
been the case that the maths only started to make sense when I tried to
solve a real engineering problem with it.

There are many areas in electronics where you *can* get by with past
experience and a "seat-of-the pants" approach, and simulation does have its
place, but the ever increasing reliance these days on simulation troubles
me. IMO there's no substitute for a sufficient understanding of the
underlying maths to be able to do it longhand if you have to.

 

[[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?

Say, where are you studying for your Master's?

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 suppose there's a reason why you're not pursuing a Master's in
Mathematics. (wicked grin)

 

[[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.

I need trignometric functions on my calculator, and occasionally use
hyperbolic functions for transmission line calculations.

For statistical calculations, I use a PC.

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.

If you are into detecting small quantities of electronns or photon,
where shot noise gets to be important some elementary statistics can be
handy.

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.

Spice won't do the right analysis if you don't know what you are doing.

 

[Mark]

I think one of the biggest problems for engineering students is that the
maths is too often taught in abstraction, which makes it difficult to
understand what the point is much of the time. In my experience, it's often
been the case that the maths only started to make sense when I tried to
solve a real engineering problem with it.

THIS IS EXACTLY RIGHT!!!!
Math is the tool.

Mark

 

[Jim Thompson]

I think one of the biggest problems for engineering students is that the
maths is too often taught in abstraction, which makes it difficult to
understand what the point is much of the time. In my experience, it's often
been the case that the maths only started to make sense when I tried to
solve a real engineering problem with it.

[snip]

Thus the MIT method... math necessary for the engineering topic at
hand is taught (in a math class) at the same time.

So I'm still a wiz at Calculus though I rarely use it.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Jim Thompson]

Say, where are you studying for your Master's?


I suppose there's a reason why you're not pursuing a Master's in
Mathematics. (wicked grin)

Ooops! I missed the "Master's". What university was this ?

...Jim Thompson

 

[Sven Wilhelmsson]

Ah, yes. J_0, Y_0, I_0, K_0. I remember those. Also erfc(eta) and
the infinite series of sines and cosines. Solutions to PDEs.

But Sturm-Liouville continues to elude me.

Sturm-Liouville_theory is the mathematical basis
for very much in modern physics including electronics.
Most of us know about Fourier Analysis.
How would we deal with e.g feedback in control systems without
Fourier Analysis or Laplace transforms?

Basics can be found at:
http://www.efunda.com/math/ode/sturm_liouville.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm-Liouville_theory

Also... what's the deal with (in)homogeneous boundary conditions? I
vaguely remember that inhomogeneous boundary conditions were Bad, and
*something* was done to render them homogeneous. (Was that why we had
to make them dimensionless?)

Must admit one thing. Have forgotten. Sorry!

 

[[email protected]]

Ooops! I missed the "Master's". What university was this ?

...Jim Thompson

#include
<std_joke_about_MITs_English_and_Reading_Comprehension_Program.h>

- Michael

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Thus the MIT method... math necessary for the engineering topic at
hand is taught (in a math class) at the same time.

So I'm still a wiz at Calculus though I rarely use it.

Doesn't wizzing on your Calculus make it rust?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Daniel Mandic]

aaaahhrrmmbggllffkkkxxyyy..


Why can't you not leave something unpredictably so as it is!!!



You are really like some subscribers described you.



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Sven Wilhelmsson]

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

Dave

My dream is to cut a piece of that wire and curl it into a helix.
The day I have succeeded with this, I will probably need help from your
friend, unless Helmholtz and Heaviside can help me ;-)

Thanks,

 

[Homer J Simpson]

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

Yes. There's at least one cathedral (Winchester Cathedral) that was found to
be floating on a base of logs over a bog.

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

Proper engineering, design and construction would have avoided most
collapses and the heroic rescue missions other buildings needed.

 

[Homer J Simpson]

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.

But Gaudi was trying to achieve something new with his design. He was far
from medieval.

 

[Homer J Simpson]

The teaching assistant came to the rescue by explaining that it was
pointless to try to *really* teach us, that one needs to study theory
of distributions first, and even then, it's still a matter of active
research. Our heads would pop (at least mine would have).

No, this is just bad teaching. It can be done, but too many teachers at
school (and esp. at college) can't do it.

 

[Jim Thompson]

Doesn't wizzing on your Calculus make it rust?

NOT whizzing, WIZ.

My web coffee supplier, coffeewhiz.com, has recently changed to
coffeewiz.com ;-)

...Jim Thompson