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What blows my mind is that PhDs don't know this stuff. I have only high school level ed, but I had to train many CS grads for real-life positions, since they w

by Myrth 13y ago

What blows my mind is that PhDs don't know this stuff. I have only high school level ed, but I had to train many CS grads for real-life positions, since they were absolutely not fit for job. High schoolers were grasping the ideas much better.

pm90 13y ago
You know, I thought a lot about this. In India, there is a weird phenomena that I noticed: many of the best teachers want to teach, not college students, but high school students preparing for the rigorous engineering entrance examinations. Of course, it helps that they get paid a lot more than university professors, but the ones that taught me, for instance, had a genuine desire to impart knowledge where it would matter the most. They loved it when we would solve a difficult physics/math problem. By contrast, they complained that most college students were too distracted with other things. I found this to be true when I went to college, when, of a class of about ~500 students, only about 50 were actually honestly learning. My hypothesis is that many college grads don't make the most of their easy access to learning, but have an incredible sense of self-entitlement. Those in high school are still at a very impressionable age; curious about the way the world works and hungry to find out more.
gcr 13y ago
A PhD gives you a specialty, not a well-rounded education. That's why it exists. CS PhD students are not electrical engineering PhD students.
- svachalek 13y ago
  Plus, as far as I know this is interesting trivia rather than practical information for most engineers. I have a BSEE and don't remember the speed of electrons ever being brought up; for everything I ever learned it was more important to know about the speed of electricity. (But then I did software my whole career so maybe I'm missing something.) It was mentioned that the direction of current is opposite the flow of electrons. But again you never cared about the electrons, just the electricity.
  - yew 13y ago
    EE work is usually done with traditional, well-characterized materials. Treating drift velocity as anything other than part of a constant or a temperature variance equation is pretty rare. It's more common if you're doing novel research.

by Myrth 13y ago

pm90 13y ago

You know, I thought a lot about this. In India, there is a weird phenomena that I noticed: many of the best teachers want to teach, not college students, but high school students preparing for the rigorous engineering entrance examinations. Of course, it helps that they get paid a lot more than university professors, but the ones that taught me, for instance, had a genuine desire to impart knowledge where it would matter the most. They loved it when we would solve a difficult physics/math problem. By contrast, they complained that most college students were too distracted with other things. I found this to be true when I went to college, when, of a class of about ~500 students, only about 50 were actually honestly learning. My hypothesis is that many college grads don't make the most of their easy access to learning, but have an incredible sense of self-entitlement. Those in high school are still at a very impressionable age; curious about the way the world works and hungry to find out more.

gcr 13y ago

A PhD gives you a specialty, not a well-rounded education. That's why it exists. CS PhD students are not electrical engineering PhD students.

svachalek 13y ago
Plus, as far as I know this is interesting trivia rather than practical information for most engineers. I have a BSEE and don't remember the speed of electrons ever being brought up; for everything I ever learned it was more important to know about the speed of electricity. (But then I did software my whole career so maybe I'm missing something.) It was mentioned that the direction of current is opposite the flow of electrons. But again you never cared about the electrons, just the electricity.
- yew 13y ago
  EE work is usually done with traditional, well-characterized materials. Treating drift velocity as anything other than part of a constant or a temperature variance equation is pretty rare. It's more common if you're doing novel research.