repak shawahb
dry humor for cactus farmers

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rsw@jfet.org


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Wed, 30 Mar 2005

the engineers' conceit (or is it just MIT?)

Haven't blogged in a bit, but I had a realization a few days ago that I thought I might share with y'all.

The other night, I went to TGI Friday's with a horde of friends. During dinner, I was talking with Matt Powell, a co-worker of mine who's also MIT '02, M.Eng '04. Somehow, the topic of raising children came up, at which point I asked the age, in his opinion, at which one was capable of grasping calculus and differential equations. After some discussion, we settled on 12ish as probably the earliest one would want to teach their child such things.

A couple of the people sitting near us (not engineers) overheard this and questioned why any sane person would ever do something like that. I immediately, almost instinctively, responded that a person couldn't carry on an intelligent conversation about anything technical, or even really understand much going on around him, without a grasp of calculus and diff. eq., and (in so many words) that people who didn't have such a grasp were basically worthless. Matt expressed agreement.

Then we remembered that we were in non-engineer company, and that there were maybe two or three other people at the table of fifteen who'd taken anything beyond maybe "college algebra." This apparently failed to cause Matt any discomfiture, since, well, he's Matt, and he tells it like he thinks it is no matter how unpleasant that might be. I, on the other hand, was somewhat embarrassed.

I still think I'm right, though. People who don't have at least some basic grasp of calc, diff. eq., mechanics, and E&M (the latter two being little more than the application of the former) must go through life in some sort of epic fog.


[ permalink | 11 comments ]

writebacks

wrote


Interesting...what kind of epic fog?

repak wrote


hmmm... probably an Odyssian one.

-repak

Sherv wrote

hmm
Computation is also pretty important nowadays (in the "how computers work" sense). And even knowing a decent bit of all of the above (except for E&M, in which I think I'm pretty shaky), I still am amazed by much of everyday existence.

repak wrote


...but amazed and confused are very different.

-repak

dmax wrote


Assuming you understand how the world works because you can predict the behavior of simple systems is deluding yourself. However, not evening bothing to TRY to understand it (which necessitates the study of calc, diffeq, etc.) is willfull ignorance and therefore commands my disrespect. Also: coke and hookers.

repak wrote


Are you saying that coke and hookers command your disrespect, or were you just casually mentioning them for the hell of it?

-repak

wrote


No mention of hookers can be casual, let alone disrespectful. If disrespect were intended, he would have called the aforementioned hookers "sex workers." Sheesh.

By the way, amazement and confusion are practically wedded in my psychology. Surprise, however, is not engaging in a menage a trois here.

wrote


The above from Sherv.

Sherv wrote

one other thing
Max has a very good point. I expect to learn so much in my lifetime that I will reach a pit of despair over the fullness of my ignorance from which the only possible escape can be death.

i wrote

Nerds Unite!
I agree. On the equations @ age 12 sort of thing. And the necessity of intelligent conversations, in both kids and coworkers. haha Thanks for the recs on the mullet music, big R! :)

Rodin wrote


As Heather once said, in the view of MIT engineers, being a liberal arts major basically involves lots of whining most of the time, and the rest of the time not building anything. Q.E.fvckingD.




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