4 ms·
This is a kind of problem where just knowing a lot of shit is a partial inoculation. If you know the population of New York City, and the weight of a Boeing 747
by freepor 7y ago
This is a kind of problem where just knowing a lot of shit is a partial inoculation. If you know the population of New York City, and the weight of a Boeing 747, and the number of languages spoken in the world, and random shit like that... you catch these errors all the time.
- droithomme 7y ago> knowing a lot of shit is... > population of New York City 15 million? > and the weight of a Boeing 747 600 tons? > and the number of languages spoken in the world 15,000? How'd I do? I don't know any of these though, I just guessed. I think I'm probably within an order of magnitude but I'll let you decide.
- iambateman 7y ago8.6M 360 tons (takeoff) 6500 Your approximations are pretty good! Next time just divide by 2 and you’re good ;)
- freepor 7y agoYour estimates show that you know enough other shit to make good estimates.
- alexis_fr 7y agoHere you notice that engineering involves a lot of general culture, and making a good engineer starts at birth. When I was a baby I asked my dad to draw power outlets, we had Legos, we’ve visited dozens of factories, I did a dozen programming languages before 18, I’ve always gathered data about things (Ok a nuclear plant is 1GW, a plane has 20t of fuel, etc), and I’m an average engineer. Meanwhile my bigger sister has technical but never much about making things work, we went to the same engineering school but she ended up project manager because she can’t do the engineering job. So she manages people.