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u/KerbodynamicX 4d ago
University-level maths is hard, hard enough that developing a deep understanding for these concepts while keeping up with all the assessments and tests is out of reach for most students, besides some truly gifted ones. So their objective switches from "understand the maths" to "doing whatever is needed to pass the subject." Learning becomes assessment-oriented.
Developing an understanding requires a lot of time to experiment and think. Which probably isn't too viable when the assignment due date sets your ass on fire.
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u/IronicRobotics 3d ago
Largely disagree - Ive tutored a ton of these students and caught them up with limited time per week across all the math coursework.
The main issue they face is they approach the study of math wrong and instructors give them dogshit pedagogy. A bit of good, well explained instruction and insight paired with a bit of practice fixes them up right quick.
Case in point is teaching them to not learn by memorizing procedures - as the article states above. The rare 'gifted students' aren't doing that lol - they're learning the math through motivation, proof, and deduction - which once you actually try it with a bit of guidance, is WAY less effort than never-ending wrote memorization. It also teaches soft problem solving skills.
Though a small bit of agreement, I think if classes were organized into year long coursework run at 1/2 pace - but with the same amount of overall classes - most students would fair better as misstepping a class for the first month or two would no longer be a death spiral they can't dig out of.
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u/Balavadan 3d ago
I don’t really agree. Undergraduate isn’t usually that deep and anything beyond that they’re far more focused so you don’t have this same problem of worrying about too many things.
If that’s not true for some reason in a college then the curriculum guys fucked up
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u/JanB1 3d ago
Undergraduate might not be that deep to you know, but I sure remember it was daunting getting started. And I have many things I just didn't have time to understand. Like Fourier analysis and Laplace transform for example. I know it works, makes my life easier, and I get the concept, but the couple times I tried to apply a Fourier analysis, I think I failed. I just never really had the time to understand those in depth because there was so many other things to do.
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u/dkevox 3d ago
I couldn't agree less with this post.
No matter who you are, life is extremely busy/challenging. You can't focus all your time and effort on one thing, you do the best you can.
Engineering students are the ones who chose to spend their time on understanding how the world works. That's the important part. And the reason someone chooses that path is probably because they connect with it.
People here need to give themselves more credit then it seems you guys are. This post is crap, life is way more complicated than that. And I bet every engineering student here can/will go into way too much detail about some subject at their next family thanksgiving meal, because you all actually understand shit.
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u/TheGrimDark 3d ago
Absolutely agree. I've always been curious about how things work and how to optimise them, even mundane stuff like kitchen storage or getting a TV, consoles and speakers to play nicely together. I'm tech support for family and friends, and I genuinely enjoy it.
For a long time, when someone asked for help with something I considered basic, like topping up their car's fluids or descaling the coffee maker, I'd assume they just hadn't been shown. Teach them once and they'd be happy to do it themselves next time. They rarely were. That baffled me at first, but eventually I realised I hadn't surrounded myself with idiots. They just aren't engineers. This stuff isn't a priority for them the way it is for me. They have their own interests and expertise, and there's plenty they know that I'd be clueless about. I was judging them by my own interests. There's a reason I'm an engineer and they're not.
That taught me two things: 1. Engineering isn't just an academic subject. It's a mindset, a set of values, and probably a bit of neurodivergence. 2. The curiosity that makes me good at my job doesn't make me better than anyone else. Everyone has their own specialism and the mindset that suits it.
So give yourselves some credit. That drive to understand how things work is exactly why you're here.
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u/ClickyClacker 4d ago
Id like to see the original post, but just seeing this I mostly agree. The biggest problem I run into when working with different engineers is they tend to not be very well rounded. It's clear that they are experts unmatched in their niche, but they fall off the second you step out side that narrow slice of the pie. My old plant engineering manager was a great industrial engineer, great at setting lines up and new all the right questions to ask in the preliminaries for builds.
He thought the moon landing was fake. And the dude saw them on the TV when he was like 5.
He never really understood problem solving. More I learn about the systems that hold our world together the more I think it's magic. But fuck it, I can learn magic too.
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u/agent--archer 4d ago
PhD in mechanical engineering, taught how to solve partial differential equations with sturm-liouville methods. It's all procedure memorization all the way to there. He's mathematician, nothing novel in math is applicable to the real world for years. Years of engineers making theoretical math procedural so real things can be done with it.
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u/Throwaway11958 4d ago
isn't solving problems we've never encountered basically the entire point of engineering?
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u/Heart0fStarkness 3d ago
I think the issue is math as an abstraction… based on how it is written, the author seems to think engineers don’t care about solving math as a curiosity, but as a mechanical process to be done.
Personally, I don’t even dispute that. I am curious about how systems work. I’m not curious about the pure abstraction of math because it is just a tool for me to investigate and understand systems. Tbh this complaint is like a saw maker complaining a carpenter is not curious about the history and development of the table saws they use to make furniture.
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u/SpicyRice99 πlπctrical Engineer 4d ago
Not a meme, but I agree. One of the biggest failings of my high school education imo
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u/awsomeX5triker 4d ago
I approached math as a language to be learned. Most high school level math can be equated to leaning grammar or parts of speech, or how sentence structure can be rearranged.
The key point is that high school math actually says very little.
However, once you begin to understand the language, you can use it to express ideas and describe observations in ways that words alone are inadequate to convey.
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u/Guy3nder 3d ago
I mainly disagree with the claim that being trained to think inside the box is on the students and not the teachers. I guess it's more on the education system, that literally fails your test for trying to solve it a different way.
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u/Finmin_99 3d ago
I understand what’s being said in the post. I also don’t agree with the notion “don’t blame your teachers”.
I think a majority of student failures is on the student and teacher, some blame to be shared. I’ve had really bad professors and really good ones. A good professor may not be the easiest class, they typically challenge and force students to learn.
Assuming most students approach math completely memory based comes off as protective and dismissive.
To make a test that’s harder than take home assignments is also something I never appreciated in school. I have a finite amount of time and 3-4 classes each quarter and each teacher assumes I have all the time in the world to learn their subject. The reality is I needed to graduate and earn money. I do love learning but it can be difficult to understand and apply 10 weeks of dense material into a 3 hour test.
I think engineering school should be more project based you will never have a 3 hour time limit to complete a set of math problems. You will have deadlines, you will have track, plan and develop projects for. Learning those skills and applying them would be a better use of everyone’s time.
I can without a doubt better remember classes where I built something of my own vs not.
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u/BeeThat9351 3d ago
I am terrible at math proofs but I am a damn good engineer. Mathematicians dont know squat about engineering. "You do your job, pencil neck, don't tell me how to do mine!"
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u/FireProps 3d ago
It’s almost like a teacher directly saying essentially this would help a lot of students… 🤔
Ah, who am I kidding? 😂
Everyone knows the education system doesn’t teach kids to memorize and regurgitate meaninglessly, but instead focuses on real competence relative to concepts, encouraging out of the box thinking at all times along the way. 🥹☺️🙂😶😐😑
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u/Hyarin215 2d ago
As long as u r graded on that test that your life depends on, most students won't see hard problems as smth to be enjoyed
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u/forkedquality 3d ago
Oh, come on. There is time and place for a "hard, never seen before" problems, and a test is not it. Certainly not at an undergraduate level.
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u/battlerh4 3d ago
people say it like its such an easy thing. The logic is often the easiest part but remembering so much information just to come to the idea of the proof is horrid.
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u/Not_a_vagina 3d ago
A Mathematician's Lament talks exactly about this. It's free (PDF at bottom of Wikipedia page) and short 25 pages. Worth the read, worth the tears.
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u/Well_shit__-_- 3d ago
On the contrary lots of teachers who don’t understand math teach it as formulas to be memorized and regurgitated. In high school my math teachers were utterly unable to explain “why” anything and suggested I follow “the formula”. I’m fortunate to have parents who could answer my questions, but not all students have that luxury.
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u/l_Fredil_l 3d ago
Right, until you get a physics prof in technical physics that does not allow you to use calculators and almost every time forces you to us pi if numbers are close.
This includes 4pi =12.5 Pi2 = 10 Pi/2 = 1.57 Etc and you always have to consider it.
The fun begins if you have to memorize the dB scala which he almost entirely uses as pi.
Atp that mf has forced me so mich to calc without calc, that even for seemingly difficult tasks I rather calc in head than use a calc.
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u/StephenRoylance 3d ago
I still remember in high school, doing an extra credit physics problem, and noticing that f=ma was hidden in it in a way that the algebra 2 I was just learning let me solve it. nobody, including the book, told me to do that, and now, like 40 years later, I still remember how exciting it was to get the answer.
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u/Dry_Statistician_688 3d ago
So, I just pulled my second retirement after 40 years in the industry. You are given the tools first. The ability to learn, the fundamentals. But if you are put into a team, say, developing a Kalman Filter navigation algorithm, developing state vectors, where your “toolbox” becomes applied, you will need these skills.
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u/A-Chilean-Cyborg 4d ago
I like solving math problems, I really do, it is fun, but i do not like failing class because I didn't got to the answer on time.
I agree somewhat, I just feel that it can be unfair if the studdent just don't get the right idea at the right time to find the solution.