Summary of Condition of Installation

The forum site is broken and is playing silly ruggers.

Z.

Zoomup said:

.But it's all relative, and I think that they both had a firm grasp on mathematics and language.

Well, certainly Einstein thought it was relative, and Newton wrote his Principia Mathematica in academic Latin of the time. Newton was reportedly excellent at languages and grammar, and even invented his own languages and codes, as well as a new part of the language of mathematics.

Einstein was reportedly not good at Latin, and there are various snippets that he may not have been good at languages generally, although the truth of the matter may be something very different!

I think, though, perhaps both of these giants had excellent insights into the language of mathematics itself.

He equals emcy squared as we says up norf

Einstein's German is a very easy read - rather like Feynmann's English, he communicates the key principles first, and then goes back to colour in so to speak, much as you would in a normal conversation.

Among German Academics of the period that is quite rare, Lorenz or Sommerfeld are both a lot harder going. It is his mother tongue, and the language in which most of his work is written.  I understand he studied French and Latin at school and never really enjoyed it, and also spoke some Italian that he picked up while there as a child.

He only took up English to any extent in his 50s when he moved to the States, and while he could get along in spoken English, he apparently relied heavily on secretarial staff to tidy things up if there was a document or letter or whatever which was especially important, sometimes even writing a German version as well to be translated  rather  than risk a mis-understanding.

I do not consider that unreasonably below par - I'd get someone to check my German, and probably also my English, if it was for a significant publication.

The key here is to know what you can and cannot do well, and behave accordingly so folk do not need to suffer the latter, especially if they are paying for it.

Mike

Or "eebygum emcy squared innit." As they say in Gilling East.

Z.

Well, the Open University seems to think that engineers need to be able to write good academic English. I am just coming to the end of a module and one of the questions in the final assignment allocates 5 marks (out of 100 in all) for just getting the grammar, spelling, and punctuation correct. If you don't know how to do it, MS Word will do it for you.

“It appears that the earth spike has been concreated over below the drive way”

“Both consomer units are showing signs of corosion”

Both above on a hand-written EICR which, in my opinion, was otherwise a very well constructed report. I know the author and I have no doubt about his technical capabilities.
My own spelling and grammar can sometimes be below par but that is why I use MS Word with the check facility. 
However, I just feel this sloppy sort of thing let’s the side down. I am with Mapj on this in that if you know your spelling and grammar is weak, get it checked before issuing the report!

By the way, it would not be reasonable for me to say under what circumstances I am reviewing these reports. Safe to say that it is in a professional capacity and I see sufficient in number from a variety of sources to conclude that there are significant technical issues often compounded by issues of spelling, grammar and clarity. 

When I did the City and Guilds carpentry craft course forty-eight years ago, I had to do "General studies", I also had to do it again when I did the C&G Construction Technicians course forty-six years ago, this included writing letters and similar exercises.

When I did the City and Guilds 2360 twenty-two years ago there was some General Studies sessions, but it was very limited compared with what I had done twenty years before hand. 

What, if any, General Studies are included in the syllabus of the current electrical training courses?

hah. I remember during my apprenticeship (70s) we did "Liberal Studies" on the college day release course maybe same thing. We did, Drama, Art, Pottery and other such daft subjects