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> It was pretty clear that Differential Equations, maybe even parts of Calculus, were not necessary to learn the engineering, they were a way of having another
by PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> It was pretty clear that Differential Equations, maybe even parts of Calculus, were not necessary to learn the engineering, they were a way of having another department (Math) do the filtering. In ten years of work in the semiconductor industry, I never once needed to use calculus or differential equations.
I’m a trained EE. Calculus and even differential equations concepts were used all the time before I became a manager. It depends on the type of EE work you do, but I would strongly disagree with anyone who suggests these math topics aren’t relevant to EE work.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoIt doesn't even make sense, really. Calculus is the "algebra" of higher level math. That is to say, it forms the base. Diff Eq teaches you the ability to create classes of equations (meta-math, if you will). My degree wasn't in EE, but I can't imagine neither of those are useful for an Electrical Engineer.
- whimsicalism 4y agoI can imagine diffeq not being useful for an electrical engineer merely because I wouldn't expect most diffeqs they encounter to be solvable analytically? And the entire point of most diffeq courses is to focus on the small subset of analytically tractable diffeqs.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago> My degree wasn't in EE, but I can't imagine neither of those are useful for an Electrical Engineer. My degree was EE, and I can say they're definitely useful for a lot of EE concepts. It's similar to computer science: It's possible to jump into the industry and write CRUD apps and connect APIs together without ever studying algorithms or how CPUs work. However, if you go deeper or have to do the more complex work, you really need to understand the underlying concepts.