Engineering? Engineering!

[entropie]

I remember many people who originally started their major in mechanical engineering because they thought its about being creative. Then when it came to topics like fluid mechanics, advanced material mechanics or control engineering they switched their major because class was hard. I personally think nowadays that engineering involves a different sort of creativity. See, I'ld suck at making a creative movie or writing a creative text, but I am fundamentally good at problem solving, which requires a talent in analysis and problem understanding first. I think especially if you want to go into the field of EE or ME which involves some abilities in math and physics, I think you need to be someone like a creative nerd, who likes logic puzzles and who is just fascinated by natural science the moment he hears the word.

To me it involves a lot of passion, I am sure you can become a good engineer by being a good learner but if you want to be one of the best, you definitly need passion and have to go to bed at nights with a T-profile alloy, poisson ratio .3 of stainless steel V2A 18/8

 

[InvisibleJim]

They talk way too much about sex. The show has technical errors. And I never understood how a PhD physicist like Sheldon can't afford to pay the rent on his own in an apartment building affordable to a waitress. Still, Sheldon is correct about engineering in some respects.

Simple... he was a scientist, not an engineer.

 

[thisGuy]

I remember many people who originally started their major in mechanical engineering because they thought its about being creative. Then when it came to topics like fluid mechanics, advanced material mechanics or control engineering they switched their major because class was hard. I personally think nowadays that engineering involves a different sort of creativity. See, I'ld suck at making a creative movie or writing a creative text, but I am fundamentally good at problem solving, which requires a talent in analysis and problem understanding first. I think especially if you want to go into the field of EE or ME which involves some abilities in math and physics, I think you need to be someone like a creative nerd, who likes logic puzzles and who is just fascinated by natural science the moment he hears the word.

To me it involves a lot of passion, I am sure you can become a good engineer by being a good learner but if you want to be one of the best, you definitly need passion and have to go to bed at nights with a T-profile alloy, poisson ratio .3 of stainless steel V2A 18/8

Yeah...I can see that. I'm computer eng. Half my class started wanting to do hardware in first year. Then we learnt about signals and amplifiers and gates. Now most of my class if focused on software with just get it done attitude. For some reason, my trajectory has been completely different. I got into engineering because it took less time then medicine. Then I discovered programming and WOAH - my world changed...i came to lover engineering. Problem solving became my thing.

Now I'm just starting to get into hardware design - its hard (i find calculus challenging - freakin circuits and signals are all laplace and fourier) but i think it should be worth it. plus whats the point if you don't sweat a little!

 

[garbage]

The list of not-in-my-immediate-workgroup friends/colleagues who have said things "that [person] is such a bitch/jerk/asshole, I don't know how you manage to put up with them!" is unfortunately not as small of a list as one might expect.

Oh yeah, and also I hate working with bitches, jerks, and assholes. Many of them are much more expendable than they think they are, and I've seen more than a few who have been shown that in no uncertain terms by their supervisors, managers, and teammates.

I also did not like working with people who were holed up in their dark offices and didn't provide me with the direction or feedback that was their responsibility to provide--especially when I was still in college and needed the guidance. I mean, it's cool if you work better alone, but not when you're responsible for interns or other underlings.

Thankfully, integrated team-oriented approaches to engineering and science problems do exist out there, and some people have learned to work effectively on teams.

 

[Not_Me]

Now I'm just starting to get into hardware design - its hard (i find calculus challenging - freakin circuits and signals are all laplace and fourier) but i think it should be worth it. plus whats the point if you don't sweat a little!

It's good to learn it just for fun, but 99.99999% of hardware engineering tasks won't require any math beyond what you learned in grade school.

 

[funkadelik]

Happy people are still contributing to this thread. It's been helpful. Still on the fence over mechanical or electrical, though. Not that it REALLY matters. I suppose I can figure that out later.

Maybe I should flip a coin.

 

[entropie]

Think its time for the myers briggs enginering indicator

 

[Scott N Denver]

Happy people are still contributing to this thread. It's been helpful. Still on the fence over mechanical or electrical, though. Not that it REALLY matters. I suppose I can figure that out later.

Maybe I should flip a coin.

It is my understanding that electrical is MUCH more mathematical in terms of "exotic" math [Fourier and Laplace transforms for example], and often relates to circuits or circuit design. I'm less familiar here, but mechanical often seems much more about S-tasks, and/or using CAD to design something. As I understand, the math is usually more "straightforward" and "plug in a number to the computer program and see what it spits out." EE is usually used as the prototypical example of an N engineering discipline, whereas civil/mechanical seems the prototypical example. The EE's I knew in school had very regimented class schedules ["you get 4 electives over your entire 4 yr college track"], with as I recall almost all of their courses being circuit-related [graduate level expands more, and perhaps curricula have changed since 10 years ago?] whereas it seemed like mechE's had more flexibility in terms of electives AND in specializing [aerospace for example].

If you wanna deal with more math or spend a career building/designing/analyzing circuits [grad school will facilitate additional options] then EE is the obvious choice, I keep wanting to say that MechE is more broadly transferable with more options in terms of different directions to go in a career.

 

[entropie]

I still dont get who created the myth about ME is more for S's and has less to do with math. Those people obviously have never worked with gearbox engineering as in second-third-and forth degree harmonics or power plant engineering as in thermodynamics

If that's so easy that it hasnt to be mentioned compared to what EEs are doing my already strong feelings of inadequancy resulting from not being like the other kids make me feel dumb

 

[FDG]

Are fourier transforms considered fancy math? Just wondering, because they're finding their way in economics and finance too, as of late.

 

[InvisibleJim]

Are fourier transforms considered fancy math? Just wondering, because they're finding their way in economics and finance too, as of late.

Someone trying to gauge the 'frequency' of economics? Sure. Go wild

From memory the only time I've touched them are control systems for process plants. Surely they would be of more interest to central in leveling out the economy to manage interest rates?

 

[FDG]

Someone trying to gauge the 'frequency' of economics? Sure. Go wild

From memory the only time I've touched them are control systems for process plants. Surely they would be of more interest to central in leveling out the economy to manage interest rates?

Eheh, as far as I know they're currectly used mostly in finance, for theorethical (i.e. easier representation of characteristic functions) and practical (i.e. spectral analysis of time series, adjusting for seasonality) reasons. I'm still a bit skeptical though, since the results aren't much better compared to what's obtained by the usage of simpler formulae. In economics, they're used to control for seasonality effects aswell, so perhaps they might be useful for managing interest rates, but I haven't been able to keep up with the lastest research in that realm.

 

[garbage]

Are fourier transforms considered fancy math? Just wondering, because they're finding their way in economics and finance too, as of late.

Around here, they're introduced at about the senior level of undergraduate math, and they're used in mid- and high-level electrical engineering classes in order to get equations of systems--such as control systems and electronic filters--into a form that can be manipulated and studied in various ways.

I suppose that they could be used in all sorts of systems, whenever one has to translate from one domain to another. My Fourier teacher's pet peeve was that engineers tended to call the two domains "the time domain" and "the frequency domain," when the two domains to be mapped need not be frequency and time

Out of curiosity, I searched and came across a forum link that seemed to try to tie prospect theory to the Fourier transform, but I'm not sure how the transform is actually used..

 

[Not_Me]

I don't know if this will be good or bad news for most of you, but higher math is rarely used once you graduate.

 

[Scott N Denver]

Around here, they're introduced at about the senior level of undergraduate math, and they're used in mid- and high-level electrical engineering classes in order to get equations of systems--such as control systems and electronic filters--into a form that can be manipulated and studied in various ways.

I suppose that they could be used in all sorts of systems, whenever one has to translate from one domain to another. My Fourier teacher's pet peeve was that engineers tended to call the two domains "the time domain" and "the frequency domain," when the two domains to be mapped need not be frequency and time

Out of curiosity, I searched and came across a forum link that seemed to try to tie prospect theory to the Fourier transform, but I'm not sure how the transform is actually used..

At my school at least Laplace and maybe fourier transforms were introduced in our ODE class right after Calc 3. Myself and several others took that 1st semester of sophomore year. Most people [who take it] probably take it 2nd semester of sophomore year.

Laplace and Fourier transforms are both examples of "integral transforms" which is a major method of solving PDE's [partial differential equations]. My EE friends said they used them a LOT in their various device classes. I forgot where I first saw it [though I still think it was ODE], but Fourier transform was hit hard in our 400 level elective PDE class. As a physics person, we got them in quantum mech, and maybe E&M as well. You could also see them in various "applied math" or "math for physics peeps" classes. In physics we used laplace transforms, well never I think. It was always Fourier. Until later there was some "greens functions solutions" for PDE's, but virtually always it was "separation of variables." I think we only really did Fourier due to its connections/applications in quantum mechanics.

Fwiw, I don't think Fourier or Laplace transforms are particularly "special" or "difficult" math, and as a math/physics person we went far beyond them, but for a typical or average engineer yeah you might max our around there.

 

[garbage]

I don't know if this will be good or bad news for most of you, but higher math is rarely used once you graduate.

This is so, so true.. it's not used in the real world nearly as often as it's used in classes. I guess its benefit, though, is that (a) it enables you to learn the context of the problems that you solve in the real world, which helps to reinforce why thinks work the way they do in reality, and (b) it demonstrates to employers that you can actually think at that level.

I do wish that coursework actually did a better job of explaining how the stuff you learn is actually used, or if they were honest about the fact that it is only primarily used to establish context, though. This is why I'd totally recommend a co-op program for any aspiring engineer if they can get their hands on one.


However, some of the statistics concepts that I end up using in my career are pretty insane and far beyond what I ever learned in the advanced stats classes that I ever took for my degrees

 

[entropie]

just found an engineering joke I needed to share

 

[FDG]

However, some of the statistics concepts that I end up using in my career are pretty insane and far beyond what I ever learned in the advanced stats classes that I ever took for my degrees

Such as? Sorry for the nosiness, I'm just trying to understand how much my econ & actuary degree won't leave me as second choice with respect to engineers, lol.

 

[InvisibleJim]

I don't know if this will be good or bad news for most of you, but higher math is rarely used once you graduate.

I was once asked to 'check' the use of complex conjugates from a Shell knowledge expert. My head exploded. I still can't remember how to do complex conjugates or what it means. Most of my math at work is fairly trivial, only made complex by the scale I work with (often enough to touch 500 megs in a spreadsheet).

 

[garbage]

Such as? Sorry for the nosiness, I'm just trying to understand how much my econ & actuary degree won't leave me as second choice with respect to engineers, lol.

Example lazily off the top of my head, here.. on one project, we did use some neat little time window correlation stuff as inspired by this paper. Not the most elegant example, but it does show that some higher math/stats is actually used outside of the classroom environment.

Oh, and that project? It had to do with behavioral economics.