![]() I suppose it’s one of those things you have to conquer in order to do what you love. Reading up on these articles I’ve been given a new sense of hope, maybe I may not be good at math now, maybe not tomorrow, but for sure I can the day after tomorrow if I just work hard enough. I’m starting to doubt myself that I’m capable of even handling higher mathematics just to be awarded that golden diploma that says you’re qualified to build and think. I love to take apart electronics like my Xbox, built model jets as a hobby when I was younger, go to an Aviation technician school while still in high school, and my one Calculus class has me in that rock in a hard place. Written in collaboration with Eric Coale. Today, his engineering and fabrication firm builds pilot plants and modular process systems, integrates automated packaging systems and machine vision systems, and builds custom machinery for manufacturers around the world. As a young boy, he too had a passion for understanding how things work. John is a Principal Electrical Engineer and the President of EPIC Systems, Inc. Don’t let a couple of pesky math classes stop you from being a great engineer! Still had to pass it to cross finish line. Like anything in life, there will be things you just have to survive to achieve the goals you have for yourself. I still couldn’t tell you a credit from a debit, and I have an MBA. Suck it up! Every one of us have taken classes in which we “toughed it out.” For me, one of those classes was Financial Accounting. Yes, in engineering school the math sequence can be intense. Don’t let the fact that you don’t see the redeeming social value of calculus get in the way of becoming an engineer! If you look around your garage and think “I can make an automated robot that takes the trash out from these miscellaneous pieces and parts,” you might make a great engineer. In engineering, what matters more than love of math is being a person that wants to understand how things work, likes to take things apart, and likes to put things together to make the world a better place. Thomas Edison did poorly in his math classes in school, but went on to patent over 1000 inventions. Congratulations! You just learned a practical reason to care about parabolas! That point has an amplifier that can take those very weak signals and present a signal that allows you to watch the Rams beat the Bears on national TV. No matter where those radio waves hit the surface of the dish, they all bounce to the same point (the focus). What if your teacher asked “Do you have Dish TV?”… Then went on to explain that your dish collects radio waves from outer space. Let’s take a parabola as an example… y = x 2. Engineering is not so much being good at math but more about having a passion for understanding how things work and interact. “Wait… Did you say algebra?! So you’re telling me that the majority of math thatĮngineers do every day is the same stuff that I learned from Brother “Jumpin’ Joe” O’Meara my junior year of high school?” Kind of makes me want to brandish my K+E slide rule with 22 scales. Engineers get giddy with excitement the handful of times they get to use the TAN key on their HP-85 scientific calculator. If you look at what they do, day in and day out, you will find that they need to be very good at algebra. However, the reality is that the vast majority of engineers that graduate will work in industry. ![]() Granted, a small percentage of graduate engineers will work in a R&D setting that will require high level math. More than the fear of crashing or blowing off a finger, they are afraid of the “math” that it takes to become an engineer. What they don’t realize is that it took a fair amount of engineering ingenuity to accomplish these tasks. I hear a lot of kids say, “I don’t think I could be an engineer because I’m not good at math.” Yet these same kids have built go carts, figured out how to make things go boom, and have found ways to launch potatoes with incredible force. ![]()
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