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> There are 2000 people on this list who don't want a self-appointed admin to > turn the PIClist into his own virtual fiefdom. Don't pretend to speak for me, I am very satisfied with the way the admins run this list. And if you are not: why don't you volunteer to join the admins? -- Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu

On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 10:35 -0700, Vitaliy wrote: > Herbert Graf wrote: > >> > Q.E.D. > >> > >> Quantum Electro Dynamics ? > >> > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Qed.jpg > > > > For those who don't know: > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D. > > > > In my experience, mostly used at the end of mathematical proofs, which > > were by far my least favourite part of University math. > > I loved theorems (they tickled my brain), but I don't recall using > mathematical proofs beyond high school trig. :) My university had a "combined" sort of first year where every engineering student, no matter what program they were in, took a course from every engineering discipline. The only exception really was math. It was recommended that elecs and comps take a more "advanced" math course set. These courses were insanely hard; I don't think ANY of us enjoyed those classes. Part of these classes were doing actual mathematical proofs, which most of us just never understood. I clearly remember the "horror" of the delta-epsilon proof. As an aside: in the end, it turns out that taking these courses actually HURT most of us. Why? Well, these courses assumed that we already knew differential equations (which none of us did since it was never taught in the high school level) and therefore didn't teach them, while the "lower" course set did. So in our later years none of us had any clue what was going on any time a differential equation was brought in to explain something. We told proofs that we'd never been taught differential equations, none of them believed us. To this day I have never been formally taught differential equations, I think most engineering grads would be surprised at that statement given how fundamental they are to our field, but that's how it was for us. TTYL

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Herbert Graf<.....hkgrafKILLspam@spam@gmail.com> wrote: {Quote hidden}> My university had a "combined" sort of first year where every > engineering student, no matter what program they were in, took a course > from every engineering discipline. > > The only exception really was math. It was recommended that elecs and > comps take a more "advanced" math course set. These courses were > insanely hard; I don't think ANY of us enjoyed those classes. > > Part of these classes were doing actual mathematical proofs, which most > of us just never understood. I clearly remember the "horror" of the > delta-epsilon proof. > > As an aside: in the end, it turns out that taking these courses actually > HURT most of us. Why? Well, these courses assumed that we already knew > differential equations (which none of us did since it was never taught > in the high school level) and therefore didn't teach them, while the > "lower" course set did. So in our later years none of us had any clue > what was going on any time a differential equation was brought in to > explain something. We told proofs that we'd never been taught > differential equations, none of them believed us. > > To this day I have never been formally taught differential equations, I > think most engineering grads would be surprised at that statement given > how fundamental they are to our field, but that's how it was for us. And this was in U of T? I'm going to be dead....................

On Jun 15, 2009, at 11:04 AM, Herbert Graf wrote: > We told proofs that we'd never been taught differential equations, > none of them believed us. Wow. I don't think I've ever seen differential equations taught in HS. Usually you get differentiation in 1st semester calculus or "AB" AP calc, Integration in 2nd semester calculus or "BC" AP calc, and Differential equations (f'(x) + f''(x) = 1) is a 2nd year thing with no AP equivalent (double-accelerated HS math students here get to take AP statistics if they complete AP Calc as juniors.) BillW

William "Chops" Westfield escreveu: > On Jun 15, 2009, at 11:04 AM, Herbert Graf wrote: > > >> We told proofs that we'd never been taught differential equations, >> none of them believed us. >> > > Wow. I don't think I've ever seen differential equations taught in > HS. Usually you get differentiation in 1st semester calculus or "AB" > AP calc, Integration in 2nd semester calculus or "BC" AP calc, and > Differential equations (f'(x) + f''(x) = 1) is a 2nd year thing with > no AP equivalent (double-accelerated HS math students here get to take > AP statistics if they complete AP Calc as juniors.) > > BillW > I studied my high-school equivalent here in Brazil in a Salesian religious school. Our chemistry, mathematics, physics and religion teacher for most of the years was a priest, named Pe. Agreiter. He was brilliant and had deep knowledge of the disciplines and replaced the religion lessons with the other disciplines. He used to say: "I know you don't like to study religion, so I will spend the time with something you will really need." But he was also very sarcastic with everybody and specially critic to the girls, and was the terror of the students. He taught us some calculus in the last year. Surprisingly, I liked his teaching methods, but most of my colleagues trembled when the tests were approaching. Regards, Isaac __________________________________________________ Faça ligações para outros computadores com o novo Yahoo! Messenger http://br.beta.messenger.yahoo.com/

On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 19:57 +0100, solarwind wrote: > > To this day I have never been formally taught differential equations, I > > think most engineering grads would be surprised at that statement given > > how fundamental they are to our field, but that's how it was for us. > > And this was in U of T? I'm going to be dead.................... It was, I have no idea whether it's the same today. Assuming things haven't changed, part of the packages you get will have some course selection options, i.e. do you want to take chem or materials science (go materials science), and the other will be the math stream (MAT186-188 vs MAT196-198 if memory serves). I recommend going for the 18x courses. Don't worry too much though, just realize that IMHO one of the goals of undergrad studies is for students to realize how far their limit is, and they will push you to reach (and cross over) that limit many times, it's all part of the process. As a close friend of mine always said when referring to us failing an exam or assignment: it all comes out in the wash. He was right. Just be glad you didn't go Eng Sci. TTYL

On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 12:05 -0700, William "Chops" Westfield wrote: > On Jun 15, 2009, at 11:04 AM, Herbert Graf wrote: > > > We told proofs that we'd never been taught differential equations, > > none of them believed us. > > Wow. I don't think I've ever seen differential equations taught in > HS. Usually you get differentiation in 1st semester calculus or "AB" > AP calc, Integration in 2nd semester calculus or "BC" AP calc, and > Differential equations (f'(x) + f''(x) = 1) is a 2nd year thing with > no AP equivalent (double-accelerated HS math students here get to take > AP statistics if they complete AP Calc as juniors.) I agree, I know it wasn't part of the curriculum when I was in HS, and that was when HS was a 5 year program (these days it's 4 years, which means even less is likely covered). I never got a good explanation as to WHY we were never formally taught DEs. Most profs didn't believe us, those that did were just surprised and did their best to help us get through sections that needed them. Funny thing is I had to take ALOT of math courses in the first few years (I just looked it up): MAT196F CALCULUS A MAT198F LINEAR ALGEBRA MAT197H1 CALCULUS B MAT290H1 ADV.ENGINEERING MATH MAT291H1 CALCULUS III ECE203H1 DISCRETE MATHEMATICS ECE302H1 PROBABILITY & APPL. Obviously other courses also had alot of math in them, these were the "math specific" ones. I wonder how much has changed? TTYL

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Herbert Graf<.....hkgrafKILLspam.....gmail.com> wrote: > Just be glad you didn't go Eng Sci. Of course I'm glad I didn't take Engineering Science. I don't want to be an engineer. Duh! If you're somehow implying that the program may be more "difficult", you may be right in some respect. However, you're then misjudging the difficulty and competition life science students face. In most engineering courses, as long as you pass, you're good. In a life science program, a mere pass will not suffice. Remember that med school is the next step - and to get into a respectable med school, you need a very high university GPA. And in U of T, that will be difficult. Not because the nature of the study is hard - but because a lot of TIME is required to memorize biological facts, terms, and concepts.

On Jun 15, 2009, at 1:34 PM, Herbert Graf wrote: > I never got a good explanation as to WHY we were never formally taught > DEs. Most profs didn't believe us, those that did were just surprised > and did their best to help us get through sections that needed them. I was a bit nonplused that after 2.5years of calculus plus related math coverage in physics and engineering classes (including differential equations) (actually, I was really pleased with the way the math in math, engineering, and physics all lined up at Penn), it was all thrown away in favor of phasors and smith charts and the like. > > Funny thing is I had to take ALOT of math courses in the first few > years > > MAT196F CALCULUS A > MAT198F LINEAR ALGEBRA > MAT197H1 CALCULUS B > MAT290H1 ADV.ENGINEERING MATH > MAT291H1 CALCULUS III Huh. I'd have expected "calculus III" to include differential equations, especially if linear algebra was a separate class... (and differential eqn wouldn't normally have been a freshman class, either... Weird.) BillW

On Tue, 2009-06-16 at 00:16 +0100, solarwind wrote: > On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Herbert Graf<EraseMEhkgrafspam_OUTTakeThisOuTgmail.com> wrote: > > Just be glad you didn't go Eng Sci. > > Of course I'm glad I didn't take Engineering Science. I don't want to > be an engineer. Duh! Sorry about that, for some reason I had assumed you were going into engineering. > If you're somehow implying that the program may be more "difficult", > you may be right in some respect. However, you're then misjudging the > difficulty and competition life science students face. In most > engineering courses, as long as you pass, you're good. In a life Most certainly not true of regular engineering at UofT (eng sci being even more competitive, the last stat I heard was 50% fail to proceed). Failing was common, reason being they made the courses harder then average and then "bell curved" everybody to make the final average high C low B. This meant that most people got really low marks that magically got higher. This also meant that you had to ensure your marks, whatever they were, were not at the bottom. I don't remember exact numbers, but I know that a good number of people in my first year were not in the same program in the last year. > science program, a mere pass will not suffice. Remember that med > school is the next step - and to get into a respectable med school, > you need a very high university GPA. And in U of T, that will be > difficult. Not because the nature of the study is hard - but because a > lot of TIME is required to memorize biological facts, terms, and > concepts. That depends on the student, what is hard for one student is easy for another. I graduated with some students that had amazing memories, but had trouble with more intuitive type content. You cannot generalize a program like that. TTYL

On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 20:10 -0700, William "Chops" Westfield wrote: > On Jun 15, 2009, at 1:34 PM, Herbert Graf wrote: > > > I never got a good explanation as to WHY we were never formally taught > > DEs. Most profs didn't believe us, those that did were just surprised > > and did their best to help us get through sections that needed them. > > I was a bit nonplused that after 2.5years of calculus plus related > math coverage in physics and engineering classes (including > differential equations) (actually, I was really pleased with the way > the math in math, engineering, and physics all lined up at Penn), it > was all thrown away in favor of phasors and smith charts and the like. Funny, the best word I could use to describe how I felt when phasors and smith charts were introduced was relieved. Here was something that I could intuitively understand. Imaginary numbers were horrible for my brain to grasp, phasors, not a problem. University really ruined math for me. In high school I really enjoyed it, I found it challenging at times, but it was an interesting challenge. In university most math courses were taught by math profs that had the opinion that engineers "abused" their work. I remember one prof basically stating he didn't like engineers since all they do is use the results of his work. Obviously a prof with an attitude like that wasn't going to be the best teacher. {Quote hidden}> > > > Funny thing is I had to take ALOT of math courses in the first few > > years > > > > MAT196F CALCULUS A > > MAT198F LINEAR ALGEBRA > > MAT197H1 CALCULUS B > > MAT290H1 ADV.ENGINEERING MATH > > MAT291H1 CALCULUS III > > Huh. I'd have expected "calculus III" to include differential > equations, especially if linear algebra was a separate class... (and > differential eqn wouldn't normally have been a freshman class, > either... Weird.) Well all I know is that the only math course that specifically taught DE was the first year math courses in the "less hard" stream. Go figure! :) TTYL

At 03:57 PM 6/16/2009, Vitaliy wrote: >Marechiare wrote: > > Yes, too much routine work to be EE, not fun at all. They are required > > to have finished projects, not cool ones. > >You couldn't tell by visiting a local college's student project fair. :) Question is: did you mean "cool" or "finished" <grin>. I recently saw some projects that were neither cool nor finished. Oops. dwayne -- Dwayne Reid <dwaynerspam_OUTplanet.eon.net> Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax http://www.trinity-electronics.com Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Marechiare<KILLspammarechiareKILLspamgmail.com> wrote: >> Of course I'm glad I didn't take Engineering Science. >> I don't want to be an engineer. Duh! > > Yes, too much routine work to be EE, not fun at all. They are required > to have finished projects, not cool ones. Part of the reason I didn't chose EE. I want to chose whatever EE stuff I make, what schedule I make it on, and how I want to make it. Besides, the PICLIST can actually be fun and useful at times (for a hobbyist) - when people are not too busy lobbing insults at each other, that is. >> ...Remember that med school is the next step... > > More room to have fun. > The more fun, - the cooler the subject :-) Fun is not a word I would use to describe that...

Dwayne Reid wrote: >>You couldn't tell by visiting a local college's student project fair. :) > > Question is: did you mean "cool" or "finished" <grin>. Sadly, both. Two of the projects I saw were obviosly thrown together at the last moment, and the students took no pride in their work. Two of the best projects were sponsored by our company, and one of them was even working as originally designed. :) The bar had definitely been lowered. I remember that as recently as 2006, the projects were a lot more challenging: parts delivery robot, GPS drones, robotic arm systems. Lately it seems like every other project is a rudimentary climate control system (temperature above some arbitrary value = turn on the fan). Vitaliy

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Herbert Graf<RemoveMEhkgrafTakeThisOuTgmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 20:10 -0700, William "Chops" Westfield wrote: > I remember one > prof basically stating he didn't like engineers since all they do is use > the results of his work. Well there's a quick easy answer to that one - if the engineers didn't use the results of his work that would mean his whole life was completely pointless (though I suppose that's not something you actually say to a prof). Being from the UK, what exactly is engineering science? Is that what you call engineering over there, or is it engineering lite? I did a 3 year engineering degree (general engineering the first year, gradually specialising in electronic, communications and software). Really enjoyed the maths course in my first year (was slightly surprised to find when I was in my second year I could then help my first year girlfriend who was studying maths with her work). Kind of regret choosing maths as a 3rd year option though, as I found that really tough! Would still like to go back and study for a maths degree though given the chance... Chris

Would still like to go back and study for a maths degree though > given the chance... > > Chris > -- Math is one language I really would like to be able to speak and understand fluenty. At the time I went to school I didn't really grasp the usefullness of this subject and just barely managed it. Now I really have learnt to apreciate it and I especially admire the physicists who early in the twentieth century built mathematical models of for example atoms and subatomic particles. Things that actually couldn't be verified with real experiments until a couple of decades later. Come to think about it, this still happens today - string teory, quantum mechanics, black holes, antimatter, dark matter, the big bang, superconductors and a lot of other phenomenons. /Ruben ============================== Ruben Jönsson AB Liros Electronic Box 9124, 200 39 Malmö, Sweden TEL INT +46 40142078 FAX INT +46 40947388 spamBeGonerubenspamBeGonepp.sbbs.se ==============================

On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 10:09 +0100, Chris McSweeny wrote: > On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Herbert Graf<TakeThisOuThkgrafEraseMEspam_OUTgmail.com> wrote: > Being from the UK, what exactly is engineering science? Is that what > you call engineering over there, or is it engineering lite? I did a 3 > year engineering degree (general engineering the first year, gradually > specialising in electronic, communications and software). Unfortunately, and this has been discussed before, North America is a little different in the way engineering is treated vs. the rest of the world. Here Engineering is a 4 year program (5 if you do a co-op), and you end up with a full university degree (usually called either bachelor of science, or in my case bachelor of arts and science). Difficulty wise it's one of the hardest undergrad programs to get in to in many schools. The flip side being the post grad isn't as hard as other "professional" programs like law or medicine. Engineering Science (and note this is restricted to the definition of the university I attended, I'm sure there's variation) is a "super hard" version of Engineering, focusing even more on the abstract concepts. It's meant for more specialized engineering disciplines and those most interested in research. Examples include bio-medical engineering, aerospace engineering, etc. For the first few years EngSci students have their own courses. In years 3 and 4 they take some of the same courses as "regular" engineering students. The problem with EngSci is it's nowhere near as universally recognized as regular engineering is. A common complaint from EngSci grads is that their degree doesn't seem to hold any more "weight" with most employers then a "regular" engineering degree, and the fact that the program is harder, and they end up with lower grades means it can actually hurt them. The last info I had showed about a 50% drop out rate for the EngSci program (which is very hard to get in to to begin with), many dropping out end up in "regular" engineering. TTYL

Hi Herbert, This sounds like what was called "Engineering/Applied Physics" at Cornell. When I went there, I was trying to decide between EE and EAP. I eventually came to the conclusion that the only advantage of EAP was for those who were definitely going to grad school. With a little work, one could get just as comprehensive an education in EE. In the end, I did go to grad school, even though I majored in EE and not EAP. I don't think it would have made a difference in my case. One disadvantage of EAP was that there were more required non-EE courses, so fewer slots for electives within EE. Sean On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Herbert Graf <RemoveMEhkgrafTakeThisOuTgmail.com> wrote: {Quote hidden}> > Unfortunately, and this has been discussed before, North America is a > little different in the way engineering is treated vs. the rest of the > world. > > Here Engineering is a 4 year program (5 if you do a co-op), and you end > up with a full university degree (usually called either bachelor of > science, or in my case bachelor of arts and science). Difficulty wise > it's one of the hardest undergrad programs to get in to in many schools. > The flip side being the post grad isn't as hard as other "professional" > programs like law or medicine. > > Engineering Science (and note this is restricted to the definition of > the university I attended, I'm sure there's variation) is a "super hard" > version of Engineering, focusing even more on the abstract concepts. > It's meant for more specialized engineering disciplines and those most > interested in research. Examples include bio-medical engineering, > aerospace engineering, etc. > > For the first few years EngSci students have their own courses. In years > 3 and 4 they take some of the same courses as "regular" engineering > students. > > The problem with EngSci is it's nowhere near as universally recognized > as regular engineering is. A common complaint from EngSci grads is that > their degree doesn't seem to hold any more "weight" with most employers > then a "regular" engineering degree, and the fact that the program is > harder, and they end up with lower grades means it can actually hurt > them. > > The last info I had showed about a 50% drop out rate for the EngSci > program (which is very hard to get in to to begin with), many dropping > out end up in "regular" engineering. > > TTYL > > -

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Sean Breheny<shb7EraseME.....cornell.edu> wrote: > Hi Herbert, > > This sounds like what was called "Engineering/Applied Physics" at > Cornell. When I went there, I was trying to decide between EE and EAP. > I eventually came to the conclusion that the only advantage of EAP was > for those who were definitely going to grad school. With a little > work, one could get just as comprehensive an education in EE. In the > end, I did go to grad school, even though I majored in EE and not EAP. > I don't think it would have made a difference in my case. One > disadvantage of EAP was that there were more required non-EE courses, > so fewer slots for electives within EE. I know what you mean. I am forced to take useless courses like history in my life sciences program.