Re: Engineering and math

On 11 Oct 2006 16:02:50 -0700, alexshy@xxxxxxxxx wrote:


1) Analysing stuff in your head IS math or at least very akin to it.
2) Engineers rarely SEE what they are dealing with so for the most part
they, too are dealing in abstractions.

As someone in this thread has put it, `You just need a basic feel for
Fourier transforms, and frequency domain stuff'. And where exactly
would you get that `feel' without studying math?

That was me.

You get it by studying it and then applying it in real circuits until
it becomes *qualitatively* intuitive. But after that, you seldom or
never have to do the actual math. It's like division: I understand how
the concept works and behaves, and can (not by choice!) code a binary
fractional divide in assembly, but I never actually do division any
more, not since the calculator was invented. I believe I've actually
forgotten how to do long division.

Even concepts like mixing don't need hard math. I can show a person
graphically what happens when you multiply two signals - the sideband
shapes and such, folding through zero, like that - without writing
equations.

I'll invert your point 2): what's most important is that you can *see*
it. Being able to mechanically solve equations doesn't mean you
understand what's going on. I've seen lots of people do spiffy math
onto nonsense assumptions and insist that the collector voltage must
be 3e7, because the math says so.

Just yesterday, I told one of my guys something like "we can tolerate
a few degrees of phase shift without affecting the nuclear spins much,
bacause a cosine is flat on top. But the Taylor series approximation
of a cosine is mostly x-squared to start, so phase error piles up real
fast if we get too much of it." That's sort of hearsay math, but he
got the point. Now we can get *numerical* without solving for general
solutions. Hell, we're just engineers: we don't have to understand it,
we only have to make it work.

John


.

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