Time for licenced Engineers?

Roy Bowdler said:

De-facto an academic semester of calculus is held to have more value than many thousands of hours of relevant vocational practice. 


------------------
Moshe W replied:

Many Engineers are leveraging engineering calculations in their design process. 

The math is needed to solve the challenges in leveraging engineering knowledge in product design.

Many times calculations are the heart of engineering information. Engineers and their team must be able to find, reuse, and share this important intellectual property.


While there ate tools to be used such as Mathcad and Engineering Notebook etc the fact is that Engineers do use maths and sciences and this is why part of the licensing requirements in the US is written exams in order to cover calculations and also graduation from programs that cover the important math for the engineers.

 

--------


Just to support some of this, the majority of Engineers will be using derived formulae, graphs and tables from text books, process instructions and standards that already embed the algebra, calculus and core science principles. This forms a chain of trust back to the 'few' that enjoy that level of academic rigour. That chain of trust can look like a hierarchy, however when we consider the choice of the equation (et al) selection, for inclusion in the text books, or selection for use, we find that the 'chain of trust' starts branching and creating a mesh network as we also add the core experiences of real practitioners. It is at this point that, depending on viewpoint a new 'hierarchy' is perceived, when in reality is a broad consensus across a range of areas (say A-E in some schemes ;-).


The question is one of how is trust created and maintained, and defended when the beliefs that supported that trust are being replaced or undermined. Often, as Engineers, we have done too well in making people too comfy and they forget the old problems and create new (social) problems that can't themselves be solved by technology or technique. E.g. https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-01-08 and more relevantly the disconnect of Cognitive Dissonance and Out of Context problems (The Scott Adams Dilbert blogs have some discussions on it..).


The Grenfell fire disaster fits that slow forgetting cycle (e.g. the Summerland fire and others before and after). 'It' is a problem of the human condition... The network of trust fades to a chain and then breaks.

Roy Bowdler said:

De-facto an academic semester of calculus is held to have more value than many thousands of hours of relevant vocational practice. 


------------------
Moshe W replied:

Many Engineers are leveraging engineering calculations in their design process. 

The math is needed to solve the challenges in leveraging engineering knowledge in product design.

Many times calculations are the heart of engineering information. Engineers and their team must be able to find, reuse, and share this important intellectual property.


While there ate tools to be used such as Mathcad and Engineering Notebook etc the fact is that Engineers do use maths and sciences and this is why part of the licensing requirements in the US is written exams in order to cover calculations and also graduation from programs that cover the important math for the engineers.

 

--------


Just to support some of this, the majority of Engineers will be using derived formulae, graphs and tables from text books, process instructions and standards that already embed the algebra, calculus and core science principles. This forms a chain of trust back to the 'few' that enjoy that level of academic rigour. That chain of trust can look like a hierarchy, however when we consider the choice of the equation (et al) selection, for inclusion in the text books, or selection for use, we find that the 'chain of trust' starts branching and creating a mesh network as we also add the core experiences of real practitioners. It is at this point that, depending on viewpoint a new 'hierarchy' is perceived, when in reality is a broad consensus across a range of areas (say A-E in some schemes ;-).


The question is one of how is trust created and maintained, and defended when the beliefs that supported that trust are being replaced or undermined. Often, as Engineers, we have done too well in making people too comfy and they forget the old problems and create new (social) problems that can't themselves be solved by technology or technique. E.g. https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-01-08 and more relevantly the disconnect of Cognitive Dissonance and Out of Context problems (The Scott Adams Dilbert blogs have some discussions on it..).


The Grenfell fire disaster fits that slow forgetting cycle (e.g. the Summerland fire and others before and after). 'It' is a problem of the human condition... The network of trust fades to a chain and then breaks.