Quote:
Originally Posted by jmanela
How much to engineers actually use calculus? What is the proportion of Non-Calc vs. Calc computations?
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It depends on
why you are asking. If you are attempting to justify skipping out on one moment of calculus, you will just be shooting yourself in the foot. The more math you have available to you, the more interesting things you will be able to do in your career. If you are asking whether you should take additional e.g. statistics instead of additional calculus, let us know what you are interested in.
Gary said it better than I could:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary Dillard
Frequently I have to derive my own beam equations for unique situations that aren't available in Roark and that requires differential and integral Calculus.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary Dillard
Sometimes there are easier ways to get the answer but if you want to understand the sensitivity of the answer to variable parameters you really need to derive the equations yourself.
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In my (brief) career, I've used a lot of calculus, algebra, and linear algebra, but the math that has proved most useful to me has been optimization theory and numerical methods.
My favorite thing to do as an engineer is to describe my system as a series of equations (see Gary's post), massage those equations to describe what I want my system to do, and then translate it back. Or, even better, having a machine crunch over those equations and optimize them for me. Any weekend adventure you take is made better by the knowledge that something is doing your work for you while you relax.