How much math(s) do we really /need/ to learn? 23

[GregLocock]

This is a continuation of a previous thread that was going OT.

At university something like 15% of my course was maths. It was the hardest part of the degree for me (and I was in the top 2-5% in maths at high school).

Since this is an international forum I guess it complicates things, but I'd like to get an idea of how much maths people (a) think should be taught in, say, a decent mechanical engineering degree, and (b) of that what they actually use, and (c) what they wish they had learned but didn't (d) what they had to learn but wish they hadn't.

Here's my (non complete) guess:

(a)

Calculus to say the level of double integrals and surface integrals, Taylor series and so on.

Fourier Analysis

ODEs, preferably a bit more than I did

PDEs, to a very simple level

Stats, sufficient to design experiments and test hypothesese

Complex numbers of course

Trig - I wouldn't get too hung up on trig, just the basics seem enough to me

Matrices with hand worked examples up to say 3x3, or 4x4, inverting, transposing, adding and so on, but not Gaussian elimination or any of the other tricks we needed before PCs

Vector maths (I didn't do enough of this)

Laplace, to a very basic level.


(b)I've used all the above, to some extent, since leaving uni.

(c) Green's function, Bessel functions, more Laplace, more statistics

(d) Lots of matrix stuff and numerical methods. Some of the calculus.

Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[flamby]

Engineering degrees and laws have absoutley no logic or cohesion in their applications. So many laws, so few choices.

Quite correct! Thats perhaps why there is so much of challenge, fun, excitement and risk in engineering in contrast with accounting.

I feel there are always going to be those who will do anything to become an engineer and even if they get the "treatment" Mike got, they will overcome it. I can feel with Mike, but his experiences are his own and not of engineers.