https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ (The aussies call it 'maths')
ee's without math
Started by ●December 8, 2023
Reply by ●December 8, 20232023-12-08
On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> wrote:> >https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ > >(The aussies call it 'maths')Maxwell's equations. That's where a lot of people decide it's not the life for them!
Reply by ●December 8, 20232023-12-08
On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 22:01:11 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> wrote:>On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> >wrote: > >> >>https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ >> >>(The aussies call it 'maths') > >Maxwell's equations. That's where a lot of people decide it's not the >life for them!Of course, very few ee's ever use Maxwell's equations. I never have. My fields instructor was a brilliant Japanese guy and we couldn't understand anything that he said. He graded on the curve. I haven't actually used calculus in about 20 years. I have to have a feel for differential equations and initial conditions and such, but I don't actually have to do it. I use Spice. Anything interesting is nonlinear anyhow. Being able to do higher math is a kind of mechanical skill. It doesn't necessarily create instincts for circuits or system dynamics. Some people, like Phil H, can see through the math to the reality, but I think most EE students can't. Nowadays, computer programs can even do symbolic math and solve equations.
Reply by ●December 8, 20232023-12-08
On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 15:04:22 -0800, john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:>On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 22:01:11 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >wrote: > >>On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> >>wrote: >> >>> >>>https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ >>> >>>(The aussies call it 'maths') >> >>Maxwell's equations. That's where a lot of people decide it's not the >>life for them! > >Of course, very few ee's ever use Maxwell's equations. I never have.[...] Yes, well, when I said Maxwell's equations I was kind of meaning the main four that Oliver Heaviside was able to reduce them to. Any decent RF engineer must surely be familiar with those if not the admittedly very abstruse Maxwell originals?
Reply by ●December 8, 20232023-12-08
On Friday, December 8, 2023 at 6:21:00 PM UTC-6, Cursitor Doom wrote:> On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 15:04:22 -0800, john larkin <j...@650pot.com> wrote: > > >On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 22:01:11 +0000, Cursitor Doom <c...@notformail.com> > >wrote: > > > >>On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800, John Larkin <j...@997PotHill.com> > >>wrote: > >> > >>> > >>>https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ > >>> > >>>(The aussies call it 'maths') > >> > >>Maxwell's equations. That's where a lot of people decide it's not the > >>life for them! > > > >Of course, very few ee's ever use Maxwell's equations. I never have. > [...] > > Yes, well, when I said Maxwell's equations I was kind of meaning the > main four that Oliver Heaviside was able to reduce them to. Any decent > RF engineer must surely be familiar with those if not the admittedly > very abstruse Maxwell originals?Interestingly Oliver Heavyside had something to say about engineers and math. See page 7 section 8, 9... Although page 5 section 5 is fun with all the name dropping. Maxwell, Poynting, Hertz, Faraday and others. https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/14746/1/fulltext.pdf Mikek
Reply by ●December 9, 20232023-12-09
On a sunny day (Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800) it happened John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> wrote in <5jf6nidoovd0ki276ngnfdato3qsutmns4@4ax.com>:> >https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ > >(The aussies call it 'maths')I almost never use maaz Even counting change no longer is necessary with all those money cards. But really, I almost never use maaz and all stuff works. Filters and stuff - plenty programs or online calculators where you can just enter data. But I am just a neural net. Lost of experience designing and building thing and seeing and repairing designs from others. Net is trained very well! Last time I uses S parameters was in my school days. Much much much more (enter more much-es, not math-es) is UNDERSTANDING what them electrons are doing. Same for other stuff in fishsicks. Same for programming. Big problem is units perhaps, US wants to be different, so one of their Mars orbiters crashed because they used the wrong units... https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-climate-orbiter/ But then again if the tinkerers had a clue they would notice the different between pounds and Newtons. Bit of algebra is usually all you need... And logic reasoning, this is for the mamaticians here: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/12/the-real-research-behind-the-wild-rumors-about-openais-q-project/
Reply by ●December 9, 20232023-12-09
On 08/12/2023 23:04, john larkin wrote:> On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 22:01:11 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> > wrote: > >> On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> >> wrote: >> >>> >>> https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ >>> >>> (The aussies call it 'maths') >> >> Maxwell's equations. That's where a lot of people decide it's not the >> life for them! > > Of course, very few ee's ever use Maxwell's equations. I never have. > My fields instructor was a brilliant Japanese guy and we couldn't > understand anything that he said. He graded on the curve.We had the same problem with our High Energy Physics lecturer. He was Italian and a bit vivacious - his English wasn't great to begin with and when excited he slipped into fast Italian. His lectures were almost incomprehensible to us. HEP always looked like stamp collecting to me and it still does. Or as another unsympathetic to HEP physicist put it studying horology by smashing clocks together at ever greater speeds.> I haven't actually used calculus in about 20 years. I have to have a > feel for differential equations and initial conditions and such, but I > don't actually have to do it. I use Spice. Anything interesting is > nonlinear anyhow.That doesn't mean that you can't model it mathematically and have a cute cubic or gulp quartic equation to solve analytically and give you a feel for what is actually going on (or a good starting guess to refine).> Being able to do higher math is a kind of mechanical skill. It doesn't > necessarily create instincts for circuits or system dynamics.Only at the enough to pass exams stage. Higher maths is all about intuiting an answer and then doing the formal algebra to prove that your initial guess was right and communicate it to others unambiguously.> Some people, like Phil H, can see through the math to the reality, but > I think most EE students can't.That statement I agree with. I've often wondered why so many EEs find Einstein's special relativity so completely impossible to understand.> Nowadays, computer programs can even do symbolic math and solve > equations.Nowhere near as well as a human can yet. But they can do brute force algebra manipulations that would take humans forever and then be full of errors (and have been doing so in some specialities since the 1980's). Human intuition and computer algebra (or other computer implementation) to avoid silly mistakes is still the optimum for now. I'm not sure that will hold for very much longer as general AI is getting frighteningly good at more and more abstract and thought to be impossible problems. -- Martin Brown
Reply by ●December 9, 20232023-12-09
On Saturday, December 9, 2023 at 11:11:27 PM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:> On 08/12/2023 23:04, john larkin wrote: > > On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 22:01:11 +0000, Cursitor Doom <c...@notformail.com> wrote: > >> On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800, John Larkin <j...@997PotHill.com> wrote:<snip>> > I haven't actually used calculus in about 20 years. I have to have a feel for differential equations and initial conditions and such, but I don't actually have to do it. I use Spice. Anything interesting is nonlinear anyhow. > > That doesn't mean that you can't model it mathematically and have a cute cubic or - gulp - quartic equation to solve analytically and give you a feel for what is actually going on (or a good starting guess to refine). > > > Being able to do higher math is a kind of mechanical skill. It doesn't necessarily create instincts for circuits or system dynamics.Real mathematicians aren't practicing any kind of "mechanical skill". They can see what's going on in a way that takes us lesser mortals a lot of persistent work.> Only at the enough to pass exams stage. Higher maths is all about intuiting an answer and then doing the formal algebra to prove that your initial guess was right and communicate it to others unambiguously. > > > Some people, like Phil H, can see through the math to the reality, but I think most EE students can't.It takes work - sometimes quite a lot.> That statement I agree with. I've often wondered why so many EEs find Einstein's special relativity so completely impossible to understand.It has to be bad teaching. George Gamow's "Mr Tompkins" books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Tompkins are very straightforward explanations. I got to read them while I was still in secondary school.> > Nowadays, computer programs can even do symbolic math and solve equations. > > Nowhere near as well as a human can yet. But they can do brute force algebra manipulations that would take humans forever and then be full of errors (and have been doing so in some specialities since the 1980's). > > Human intuition and computer algebra (or other computer implementation) to avoid silly mistakes is still the optimum for now. I'm not sure that will hold for very much longer as general AI is getting frighteningly good at more and more abstract and thought-to-be-impossible problems.It seems to be at its best when the problems have lots of elements. The protein-folding problem was a recent example and New Scientist has just published an article about Google Deep Mind coming up with a couple of million new inorganic chemical structures on top of the 48,000 we know about. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0262407923022145 -- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply by ●December 9, 20232023-12-09
On Friday, December 8, 2023 at 11:05:59 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:> https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ > > (The aussies call it 'maths')This may come as a surprise to you, but engineers were NEVER good at math. Hence all these charts, graphs, nomo's, table lookups, handbooks, standards, arithmeticization of transcendental math ( transforms) and whatever else it took to get them *numbers* in least time, if at all. Engineers used to be exceptionally good at arithmetic. They used to be ridiculously pathetic programmers totally lacking in analytical and organizational skills, and probably still are AFAIK. Then don't even let them near singularities. Heaviside's so-called analysis is mere symbolic arithmetic. Author of article is a case point, a complete idiot.
Reply by ●December 9, 20232023-12-09
On Friday, December 8, 2023 at 5:01:21 PM UTC-5, Cursitor Doom wrote:> On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:05:09 -0800, John Larkin <j...@997PotHill.com> > wrote: > > > >https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/mathematics/ripple-effects-of-maths-crisis-spread-to-engineering/ > > > >(The aussies call it 'maths') > Maxwell's equations. That's where a lot of people decide it's not the > life for them!That's because of the notoriously bad engineering education system. People can't teach something they don't know themselves. And they don't know it themselves because their education was similar crap.
