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I've been doing civil, mechanical and electrical engineering for 20 years at this point. I don't know your experience, but from what I've seen while building hu

I've been doing civil, mechanical and electrical engineering for 20 years at this point. I don't know your experience, but from what I've seen while building huge infrastructure projects, your performance as a teenager in university amounts for very little. Its basically a measurement of how good at memorizimg problem sets you are. So, not elitist, just not universal and kind of rudimentary.

WalterBright 4y ago
If your college education was memorizing problem sets, of course you didn't learn any engineering. Caltech's engineering program had tests that were open book open note. Memorization would not work. You had to actually understand it. Posts like yours make me appreciate Caltech. P.S. My first job was designing the 757 stabilizer jackscrew assembly. I was flying on a 757 just the other day, 40 years later. How marvelous! It's a great airplane. P.P.S. We had a few "formula memorizers" and "formula pluggers" at Boeing. I was often assigned to go over their work and fix it. Nobody trusted them.
- political12345 4y ago
  How much can you be certain that your Boeing job was not the reason for your high performance, and that you are not just projecting your current self and state on mind onto your past? You are nothing like yoursef 40 year ago, to say something useless your atoms have changed 5 times over, and to say something useful you have definitely rewired your brain in many more ways. Anecdotal stories like yours are valuable, but only to you, that's why people do studies as you are of course very well aware. It could well be that the number one predictor for success is "intelligence" whatever that means, I offer the definition "to be able to absorb new information quickly and retain it and connect it to existing information to form new insights" so maybe Caltech was just a place where all such people went to and the teachers were like that so it felt "smart" and the format of the exam (open book) basically didmt really help but only enabled i.e did not actively stop the flourisment of intelligence in the students? Caltech might be good but there are many good places (Oxford, Cambridge, MIT e.g) so my untested theory could explain all of their successes. And then you went to Boeing and actually did things and that showed you how to be an enginner who made planes and your high intelligence allowed you to absorb that info quicker again and your are just projecting this future expert on a college intelligent but not expert self? Just my 2 cents
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > How much can you be certain that your Boeing job was not the reason for your high performance, and that you are not just projecting your current self and state on mind onto your past? Because I started there as a newbie along with the formula pluggers. I could see what I could do vs what they could do. For example, one task required coming up with the spinning moment of inertia of the jackscrew assembly. A plugger sat a couple rows away, and looked at it, and asked "what book did you get that formula out of?" I said it wasn't in a book, so I used calculus. He just stared at me. He was a nice enough fellow, but didn't seem real interested in engineering, and would try to get by doing as little as possible. I discovered that an undergraduate degree at Caltech conferred math skills that other universities put off until masters. Because I'd fix the math work of some of them, too. Over time, I was trusted more and more with more advanced work. The pluggers weren't. I was an average student at Caltech. I have little idea how Caltech compares today. But I've run into the formula pluggers in diverse engineering areas ever since. They would have all flunked out of Caltech. I'm not sure why you question the notion that being able to understand where formulas come from is far more valuable than just memorizing them. I'm sure there are other great universities that educate engineers that actually understand what they're doing rather than plugging in a formula. But I have no personal experience with them.
    - bitlax 4y ago
      > They would have all flunked out of Caltech. Wasn't your point that Caltech would have taught them not to be formula-pluggers?
      - Jensson 4y ago
        That is how our teaching institutions work, they teach by forcing you to learn or quit. You can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn it, so the first step is to give them an incentive to learn, and flunking those who don't want to learn is the way we do that. Any institution that doesn't flunk those who refuse to learn wont be very good at teaching.
- fezfight 4y ago
  Thank you for showing us the main problem I have with grads from certain schools: arrogant new graduates. It was just a school, man, relax, you're not actually better than other people.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    A better person, no. A better engineer, yes. My point in posting this here is not to brag, but to point out that a college education doesn't have to consist of memorizing formulas. If a particular college program requires that, there are better choices.
    - fezfight 4y ago
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        My ego is irrelevant. What is relevant is if one's engineering class consists of memorizing formulas, find a better class that emphasizes the how and the why. Math is a big part of that.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      To clarify a bit, formula-plugging enables one to solve a certain set of engineering problems. Being unable to derive the formula can also lead one to mis-apply the formulas. (I've seen this happen multiple times.) Being able to derive the formulas means one knows their limitations. It also means that one can derive a needed formula when it is not in the book. This means that one can solve a significantly larger set of engineering problems. In aircraft design, this leads to lighter and less expensive parts without sacrificing strength or utility. It's an objectively better design. Making one who can do this objectively a better engineer.

WalterBright 4y ago

If your college education was memorizing problem sets, of course you didn't learn any engineering. Caltech's engineering program had tests that were open book open note. Memorization would not work. You had to actually understand it. Posts like yours make me appreciate Caltech. P.S. My first job was designing the 757 stabilizer jackscrew assembly. I was flying on a 757 just the other day, 40 years later. How marvelous! It's a great airplane. P.P.S. We had a few "formula memorizers" and "formula pluggers" at Boeing. I was often assigned to go over their work and fix it. Nobody trusted them.

political12345 4y ago
How much can you be certain that your Boeing job was not the reason for your high performance, and that you are not just projecting your current self and state on mind onto your past? You are nothing like yoursef 40 year ago, to say something useless your atoms have changed 5 times over, and to say something useful you have definitely rewired your brain in many more ways. Anecdotal stories like yours are valuable, but only to you, that's why people do studies as you are of course very well aware. It could well be that the number one predictor for success is "intelligence" whatever that means, I offer the definition "to be able to absorb new information quickly and retain it and connect it to existing information to form new insights" so maybe Caltech was just a place where all such people went to and the teachers were like that so it felt "smart" and the format of the exam (open book) basically didmt really help but only enabled i.e did not actively stop the flourisment of intelligence in the students? Caltech might be good but there are many good places (Oxford, Cambridge, MIT e.g) so my untested theory could explain all of their successes. And then you went to Boeing and actually did things and that showed you how to be an enginner who made planes and your high intelligence allowed you to absorb that info quicker again and your are just projecting this future expert on a college intelligent but not expert self? Just my 2 cents
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > How much can you be certain that your Boeing job was not the reason for your high performance, and that you are not just projecting your current self and state on mind onto your past? Because I started there as a newbie along with the formula pluggers. I could see what I could do vs what they could do. For example, one task required coming up with the spinning moment of inertia of the jackscrew assembly. A plugger sat a couple rows away, and looked at it, and asked "what book did you get that formula out of?" I said it wasn't in a book, so I used calculus. He just stared at me. He was a nice enough fellow, but didn't seem real interested in engineering, and would try to get by doing as little as possible. I discovered that an undergraduate degree at Caltech conferred math skills that other universities put off until masters. Because I'd fix the math work of some of them, too. Over time, I was trusted more and more with more advanced work. The pluggers weren't. I was an average student at Caltech. I have little idea how Caltech compares today. But I've run into the formula pluggers in diverse engineering areas ever since. They would have all flunked out of Caltech. I'm not sure why you question the notion that being able to understand where formulas come from is far more valuable than just memorizing them. I'm sure there are other great universities that educate engineers that actually understand what they're doing rather than plugging in a formula. But I have no personal experience with them.
  - bitlax 4y ago
    > They would have all flunked out of Caltech. Wasn't your point that Caltech would have taught them not to be formula-pluggers?
    - Jensson 4y ago
      That is how our teaching institutions work, they teach by forcing you to learn or quit. You can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn it, so the first step is to give them an incentive to learn, and flunking those who don't want to learn is the way we do that. Any institution that doesn't flunk those who refuse to learn wont be very good at teaching.
fezfight 4y ago
Thank you for showing us the main problem I have with grads from certain schools: arrogant new graduates. It was just a school, man, relax, you're not actually better than other people.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  A better person, no. A better engineer, yes. My point in posting this here is not to brag, but to point out that a college education doesn't have to consist of memorizing formulas. If a particular college program requires that, there are better choices.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      My ego is irrelevant. What is relevant is if one's engineering class consists of memorizing formulas, find a better class that emphasizes the how and the why. Math is a big part of that.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    To clarify a bit, formula-plugging enables one to solve a certain set of engineering problems. Being unable to derive the formula can also lead one to mis-apply the formulas. (I've seen this happen multiple times.) Being able to derive the formulas means one knows their limitations. It also means that one can derive a needed formula when it is not in the book. This means that one can solve a significantly larger set of engineering problems. In aircraft design, this leads to lighter and less expensive parts without sacrificing strength or utility. It's an objectively better design. Making one who can do this objectively a better engineer.