/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2768356]

>Engineering General

Discuss majors, Maths courses, schools and so forth.

Also: inb4 engineers are gay and OP can't inb4

[Anonymous No.2768359]

[Anonymous No.2768361]

reporting in

[Anonymous No.2768372]

[Anonymous No.2768396]

university of waterloo and canada, major: engineering

[Anonymous No.2768407]

>>2768359
>>2768361
>>2768372

(same?)Fags

>>2768396
First year then I suppose?

[Anonymous No.2768412]

last year actually.... finish in about 3 weeks.

[Anonymous No.2768441]

>>2768412

Your major should be more specific then just "engineering" then, that much was assumed off the bat in this thread.

[Anonymous No.2768474]

I think I might major in engineering. Any advice guiz?

[Anonymous No.2768477]

oh, chemical engineering then. no other takers for this thread?

[Anonymous No.2768483]

advice: it's only hard for the first 2 years when they try to fail everyone out. you're rewarded with the easiest stuff ever in years 3 and 4

[Anonymous No.2768488]

reporting in
>EE gonna graduate with a 3.85/3.9 gpa [overall/major]

feels meh

[Anonymous No.2768489]

>>engineers are gay

[Anonymous No.2768494]

It's okay engineers. We're fine with your preferences. Let this song explain our feelings towards it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdr9CtkAkm8

[Anonymous No.2768499]

>>2768489
what the fuck is this, and how do i kill it, if it can survive a vacuum?

[Anonymous No.2768512]

>>2768499

Tardigrade

[Anonymous No.2768515]

I'm majoring Civil right now. I went to my advisor with my schedule. All he said was, don't worry we have tutoring. Not for the faint of heart

[Anonymous No.2768525]

>>2768515

at our school Civil is considered to be the "joke" engineering, followed closely by environmental and management engineering.

the hardest is considered to be electrical, maybe followed by nanotechnology engineering.

what are the opinions on the easiest engineering disciplines at your schools?

[Anonymous No.2768527]

>>2768483

What is the hardest shit you deal with?
I imagine difficulty also varies by major too.

>>2768488
Why so meh?

>>2768488
<3 Waterbears

[Anonymous No.2768536]

>>2768527
meh because starting out i was split between medicine, EE and physics.

Still like all 3 equally. I love knowing how the body functions (would love to go into neuroscience but it's so fucking complicated and would probably require a Ph.D. to do any real work).

I have an offer from a company i sort of like that makes audio equipement, but I would perfer to work in a more theoretical field (Physics and EM stuff like an MRI company would be golden)

I know i'm gonna get a post-grad degree but i'm not sure what (MSEE, MSBE, JD for patent work, maybe even Ph.D. depending on how things go)

[Anonymous No.2768539]

>>2768536
I'd like to add that's why the STEM fields fucking own - you can move around quite easily and honestly is why i picked EE - it's so fucking broad i didn't really limit my options at all.

[Anonymous No.2768543]

>>2768527

I suppose the hardest stuff is the foundation courses like Calculus 1 through 4. In the early years they throw the hardest calculus at you (i.e. integrals, theorems) to prepare you for whatever you might encounter in later years.

However in later years, all you end up doing is using tables for all your integration or doing it with computers (i.e. Matlab). Eventually it all comes down to using cookbook methods for dealing with various problems.

[Anonymous No.2768546]

>>2768525
There is no joke engineering disciplines where I go. They make it so that if you are getting a BE then most engineers will take pretty much the same classes; a few variances depending on how different the engineering discplines are. If i were to say one of them was a joke it would industrial. Now if you are talking ME thats a different story. Aerospace is the hardest where I go, but so many people hate statics, that civil isnt a joke.

[Anonymous No.2768550]

>>2768543
Matlab sucks, I hate it. Now Mathcad is for pros.

[Anonymous No.2768554]

EE is the hardest, anyone who thinks otherwise is a bitter faggot.

not sure on Nano tbh, I know a few friends in their 4th year of the nano option who say it just comes down to a lot of report writing and little hands on

[Anonymous No.2768555]

>>2768361

Why does this man look like that?

[Anonymous No.2768562]

>>2768543
Here it is calc 1+2, linear alg and differentials.

>>2768515
It varies around here depending on year and stream.
Oh shittt

>>2768546

[Anonymous No.2768570]

Do all EE's learn Gradient/Curl/etc operators?

I'm just picking it up senior year as an elective [would have been junior probably but i did an exchange] and i'm really glad i am, but some of my classmates dont take it

of course that's the physicist in me

[Anonymous No.2768578]

Mechanical fag here. Having my ass kicked by some of the maths because I'm a noob.

Electrical science isn't going great, our teacher is Indian and does minimal talking or explaining, must work harder.

[Anonymous No.2768582]

UCI EE junior here

I love it but I'm concerned about my job prospects. My priorities are being able to work abroad doing fulfilling work, not being filthy stinkin' rich. I'm perfectly content with being firmly middle class, if such a thing still exists by the time I graduate.

[Anonymous No.2768589]

>>2768582
you should be fine. average EE starting salary is ~60k

abroad is difficult though, if only due to EU regulations. I actually am receiving a german diplom and I'm not entirely sure if that would be enough to get a job, if only because the language is fucking difficult and there's enough natives to take the jobs.

[Anonymous No.2768601]

Awww fuck Australia sucks,

>>2768525
Americans get nanotechnology engineering?

>>2768536
>MSEE, MSBE, JD
wtf is that, we only have bachelors, masters and phd here.


Also, dont you guys do calculus, complex numbers, vectors and whatever in highschool?
Math seems pretty easy in my first current first year engineering course so far. not nearly as hard as you have made it sound

[Anonymous No.2768618]

>>2768582
> if such a thing still exists by the time I graduate.

fingers crossed bro. fingers fucking crossed.

[Anonymous No.2768628]

>>2768601
msee = masters electrical engineering
msbe = masters biomedical engineering
jd = some latin shit that means "law degree" - juris doctor iirc.

[Anonymous No.2768631]

>>2768601
MSEE=Master of Science in Electrical Engineering
MSBE=Master of Science in Biological or Biomedical Engineering not sure which
JD=Juris Doctor=law degree

[Anonymous No.2768632]

>>2768601
In America, you are smart if you took calculus in high school. So considering a good number of people take college algebra their first year it is hard. On top of that, sometimes we have to take pre-req classes at the same time as the main class. So youa re learning what you were suppose to know, as your building on it. It's retarded, but it gets you to graduate early.

[Anonymous No.2768633]

>>2768550

I don't think you can even go into academia/research without encountering Matlab at some point. Matlab is the best if you know how to use it, it interfaces with so many other programs....

[Anonymous No.2768630]

>>2768589
I'm still moderately concerned about job prospects because:
A) I have ethical disagreements with working for the MIC (the biggest employers around here are Raytheon and L3)
B) 60k is not that much to live off of where I am (southern california)
C) My priorities are getting the credentials to work in some other first-world nation that's worth a shit.
D) I'm black. The fuck's a nigga gonna do with VHDL?

[Anonymous No.2768645]

>>2768633
Matlab was awesome, until I learned how to use Mathcad. Mathcad is like Matlab on steroids and it is much faster and you dont have to write as much code. 16 lines in Matlab is like 2 in Mathcad. I agree it's useful, but it's nto as useful.

[Anonymous No.2768651]

>>2768628
Hmmm
I think here we have
M.E. (Electrical)
M.E. (Biomedical)

Also the average graduate salary in Australia is 57K ($Aus). Mining engineers have the highest pay by far, followed my Chemical (mining industry is huge here). I hear mechanical have it bad here, im civil and thats also quite nice since Australia is a developing country(that just really means we're 10-20 years behind in technology and infrastructure)

[Anonymous No.2768657]

>>2768633
for grad students and researchers, matlab has been status quo for years, but only recently undergraduates are using it.

[Anonymous No.2768659]

>>2768554
Nice, maybe I will just avoid it.
Opposite end, which are undeniably easy?

>>2768578
What Maths?

[Anonymous No.2768660]

>>2768630
haha, i love that you used MIC and i instinctively knew what it was. I had that exact same dilemma but im from the midwest so i'm not as constrained.

60k is nation average, it's of course higher in cali and lower in shit tier states like utah or whatever.

and AA will help you out on the hiring front perhaps? i can't say exactly :\

Have you considered relocating? it's fairly common for engineering students for better or worse..

[Anonymous No.2768669]

>>2768657

I think a lot of the power of Matlab is the extensive library of publicly available tools

[Anonymous No.2768671]

>>2768659
as an EE we make fun of arch/civil and mech alot.

idk though because if an ME stayed to the path of material physics you can do some AWESOME shit like meta materials .. but so many ME students seem just to be gearheads/etc. although i must plead ignorance to their courseload overall.

[Anonymous No.2768676]

I use mathmatica, what does this make me

[Anonymous No.2768689]

>>2768632
Wow, calculus in American highschools makes you smart?
Hilarious, year 11 is introductory calculus and year 12 is further calculus in Australia.
Then there are heaps of students like me who take extension1 (extra calculus, about 50% of students take it) and extension2 (complex numbers, vectors....insanely for highschool students, more difficult that 1st year university).

And the Department of Education keeps raving on how we are behind the rest of the world in math.(apparently you guys do arcsin and stuff in highschool)


>>2768645
>>2768633
>matlab
Oh shit guys, is it really that important?
I dont do matlab since im taking a combined civil/medical science and had to cut down on engineering subjects to make room for medical science.(university told me which subjects not to choose and matlab was one of them....maybe i do it in later years)

[Anonymous No.2768691]

>>2768669

even in my undergrad (chemical) i have relied on Matlab almost exclusively for projects and design. Having simulink is also an incredibly useful tool.

I'm not familiar with Mathcad, I think we used it once and then were taught to use Matlab. Can Mathcad handle systems of ODEs?

[Anonymous No.2768702]

>>2768689

only take that Matlab course if you're planning on doing graduate work at some point. It's rare to see Matlab in industry I think...for now

[Anonymous No.2768704]

>>2768689

And I'm sure you're being completely objective and not exaggerating in what the "average australian" must complete to pass high school.

Isn't Australia the country that blames video games and violent books as the reasons behind crime and because of that, heavily censors them?

[Anonymous No.2768706]

>>2768704
I'm not even Australian or have any affinity for Australian culture but that's terrible logic and you know it.

[Anonymous No.2768710]

>>2768691
Yea, it does a pretty good job with it. I preffer Mathcad because it recognizes many more equations, constants, and it actually does a good job separating constraints.
>>2768689
The basics are really easy to learn if you want to do it on your own. I would recommend learning it because it is just so convenient

[Anonymous No.2768722]

>>2768689
wheres the proof flavored pudding?

[Anonymous No.2768723]

>>2768704
dont forget, pornography involving women with small breasts encourages pedophilia

[Anonymous No.2768724]

>>2768704

He isn't really exaggerating that much if he is; Australia has the highest education score in the global HDI rankings. Still kind of stupid to compare education curriculums from different countries, though.

[Anonymous No.2768732]

>>2768601

It's all very basic by /sci/ standard but a lot of it is new to me. I never did A-level maths.

Integration, logs, trig identities, binomials, statistics, pre-calc. It doesn't help that the course is part time and my class is full of people less capable than I am. We don't go into any real depth with the math side so far, quickly brush over it and show you can answer one or two questions.

Next topic is simple harmonic motion, looking forward to it.

Roll on university ffs.

[m1ckey !dkJI/P7Y32 No.2768734]

>>2768601
Aussie math curricula is general isn't hard. I remember looking through the math IB and it was essentially dumbed- down A levels.

[Anonymous No.2768737]

>>2768704
Well theres acutally a few levels of math let me explain.
Apparently Americans dont get a University Admission Index? this true?
Australia has an ATAR system.
>you take a certain number of subjects, and you get a mark out of 100 for each. your best 5 subjects get added up for an 'aggregate' out of 500. people are then separated into rankings of increment 0.05 for their university admission mark.
>ie the top students with highest ~20 aggregates get a 99.95, the next top top ~20 get 99.90 and so on.....

>>2768704
>blames video games and violent books as the reasons behind crime and because of that, heavily censors them?
Yes, no R18+ gets released in Australia. whenever a game gets branded R18 (Left4Dead2....there was some other game recently ...what was it?) everybody gets butthurt and petitions the government.

Average public here is a dumb bogan who blames outside influence on the development of their white trash kids. Country is fucked, dont ask me.

[Anonymous No.2768741]

>>2768734
IB is other states.
Sorry should have mentioned in states other than the capital, they have other shit that is easy. I didnt want to complicate things by talking about each state.

[Anonymous No.2768742]

>>2768737
your universities must be even more asian-dominated than ours then
anyway the us cant use objective standards for university admissions because it would be racist and prevent blacks and hispanics from being equally represented

[Anonymous No.2768752]

Average Australian citizen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpFUAJtua_I

[Anonymous No.2768755]

>>2768732
hey we do all those in math extension1 year 12 actually.

HEY WAIT GUYS
I have a good idea, i will post a copy of my highschool mathematics paper tell me what you think

[Anonymous No.2768766]

>>2768755
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc_exams/hsc2010exams/pdf_doc/2010-hsc-exam-mathematics-extens
ion-2.pdf

try to skip first 4 pages, its easy integration by formula sheet.

[Anonymous No.2768767]

>>2768671
Ahaha I can understand the mocking civils.
MechE has hefty courseloads though.

>>2768676
How was ChemE?
Mathematica user.

>>2768477

[Anonymous No.2768769]

The supposedly hardest maths subject in Victoria only goes up to Calc 1; differential equations, complex numbers etc.

[Anonymous No.2768775]

>>2768769
>hardest math subject
>complex numbers
i did that in high school
>an amerifat high school, mind you

[m1ckey !dkJI/P7Y32 No.2768780]

>>2768741
I thought IBs were offered for all of the states. What did you take prior to uni?

[Anonymous No.2768786]

>>2768737

You are a race of criminals so whaddaya expect?

[Anonymous No.2768790]

>>2768742
>asian-dominated
My university is 50% asian
80% for heavy math courses like engineering
90% of people doing high school maths extension2 are asian

Australia is close to Asia so all the immigrants/Asylum seekers/whatever go straight here

Also
>im asian

[Anonymous No.2768795]

>>2768775
we're talking about high school. it's called specialist maths and it's done in year 12

[Anonymous No.2768809]

>>2768780
NSW (capital state New South Wales) HSC (Higher School Certificate)
All the other states are considered dumb apparently, personally i dont know if its true, but i assume so.

You guys dont have Admission rankings out of 100? i hear you have different entrance exams for each university course. Every university here gives admission based on ATAR mark

[Anonymous No.2768814]

>>2768775
Amerifat high schools vary a lot. I went to this hippiefuck hybrid montessori independent study/homeschool thing which didn't go up to calculus even if I were ready for it. I was in there just to keep my ass from getting literally murdered by classmates.
I tested out 2 years early and did fine at a community college before transferring to real school.

[Anonymous No.2768870]

>>2768814

What do you mean by that?

[Anonymous No.2768873]

So how do these compare to year 12 American examinations?
This is math extension2 for australia

[Anonymous No.2768878]

that last one was a mid-easy question.
heres a mid level

[Anonymous No.2768888]

>>2768873

I like this second problem... fun.

[Anonymous No.2768894]

>>2768888
there were a few papers over the years were people had to prove Pi or e was irrational.....i think that happened 4 times.

[Anonymous No.2768899]

>>2768873
There are no year 12 examinations in the US, there's BC Calc which is essentially watered-down calc 2 as an option and there's IB which is rare, but the average high school student will take AB Calc if they're not an idiot and if not there's no real exam.

[Anonymous No.2768909]

>>2768899
wat
we had to endure this shit

[Anonymous No.2768931]

What's electrical engineering like?

[Anonymous No.2768935]

>>2768909

Canadian highschool fagget here taking intro calc course.

Holy fuck that looks hard.

[Anonymous No.2768946]

>>2768931
Lots and lots of ever more increasingly complicated circuits and methods of simplifying, analyzing, and optimizing them. Very abstract and mathematical as far as engineering goes.

[Anonymous No.2768951]

>>2768909

These questions are really great. Step by step instructions for gee-whiz type results that test a wide body of theory.

[m1ckey !dkJI/P7Y32 No.2768965]

>>2768909
so comparable to A levels. It's not that hard because of how the questions are structured.

[Anonymous No.2768968]

>>2768935
Believe me, it is about 3 times harder than what it looks.

[Anonymous No.2768979]

How hard are electrical engineering classes compared to physics classes? I'm currently a sophomore so I haven't taken any actual engineering courses yet, but am 2/3 of my way through my physics courses. Physics rapes my ass (mostly because I don't study enough).

[Anonymous No.2768981]

>>2768965
+1

AS level, A2 is harder than this.

[Anonymous No.2768990]

>>2768946
Gah, painful.
Well what is not hard then?

[Anonymous No.2769038]

>>2768965
Oh really?
So you do have stuff harder than this then

[Anonymous No.2769039]

>>2768899

I took IB Math HL. I wouldn't say the tests were necessarily difficult knowledge wise, but IB is rather fond of "twist" questions, questions that involve applying concepts from multiple parts of the curriculum (i.e Quadratics with logarithms, as a basic example), that they don't explicitly teach how to do. They also have a hard on for induction.

[Anonymous No.2769041]

Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineer from Purdue here,

Purdue is pretty bamf on reputation, but I'm currently having my ass handed to me this semester.

Currently taking differential equations, thermodynamics, electromagnetics and optics, structures, and graphics.

Honestly, the most assrape I ever experienced in a math class was Calc II (infinite series killed me) and Linear Algebra. Calc III was just Calc I with another variable, and diff eq isn't that hard yet (haven't gotten to PDEs, so don't take my word for it).

Currently doing some MATLAB for my differential equations class. It's 3 AM here. Second all nighter this week. Feels bad, man.

[Anonymous No.2769050]

>>2768878
>twists....hard on for induction

like this one?
>>2769039


try to understand these solutions by the way guys, its not nearly as easy as the solutions make it look.

[Anonymous No.2769079]

>>2769038

The questions seem pretty straightforward if you know the material. It really comes down to how you classify "difficult"; is a test more difficult when it has more concepts with more straight forward solutions, or when the problems themselves require input beyond what is explicitly taught in class?

[Anonymous No.2769123]

>>2769041
What was so bad about linear algebra?

[Anonymous No.2769134]

>>2769079
>explicitly taught in class
yeah that is very argueable.
There is no real standard set out by the Board of Studies for math extension2.i think they are supposed to teach you but theres just so many different ways of throwing twists and turns into the question that you cant memorize every trick.
Also most teachers in Australia are incompetent and dont get through all the harder examples.

>math extension2 used to be harder but they removed lots from the course in 2000 due to teacher incompetency

[Anonymous No.2769151]

>>2769079

The problem is that for a lot of students, the IB or AP or A level or whatever is the first time they are asked to do any math that requires a lot of different tools all at once.

Most people learn integration by parts and then take an integration by parts test where they do five integration by parts questions. At some other point they learn trigonometric integration and then they take a trigonometric integration tests where they have to do five trigonometric integrals. But no one is ever asked to do them at the same time, or to be at all clever.

These questions require a modicum of cleverness and because most students are never asked to be clever, they perceive the question as unfairly hard.

And in a lot of ways they're right. It's not that it's unfair to ask them to be slightly clever. What's unfair is asking them to be slightly clever after twelve years of rewarding them for blindly applying tools.

[Anonymous No.2769162]

>>2769050

This could be from previously perceived difficultly, but I remember some that had very interesting twists, not just recursive functions (which we did learn). One memorable one was something along the lines of:

"You roll two six-sided die, a blue one and a green one. The blue die determines the first term of an arithmetic sequence, and the green die determines the common difference. Find all possible die rolls that yield an arithmetic sequence with at least one perfect square. Then generalize the pattern, and prove your conjecture with induction."


>try to understand these solutions by the way guys, its not nearly as easy as the solutions make it look.

Most of us here (at this time, anyway) are a lot further than that point in mathematical education. You should give us the benefit of the doubt.

[Anonymous No.2769175]

>>2769050

This could be from previously perceived difficultly, but I remember some that had very interesting twists, not just recursive functions (which we did learn). One memorable one was something along the lines of:

"You roll two six-sided die, a blue one and a green one. The blue die determines the first term of an arithmetic sequence, and the green die determines the common difference. Find all possible die rolls that yield an arithmetic sequence with at least one perfect square. Then generalize the pattern, and prove your conjecture with induction."


(Re-posted to remove something that I felt was unnecessarily rude)

[Anonymous No.2769192]

>>2769162
ah ok, i've only been here twice and last time was just people asking homework physics.

[m1ckey !dkJI/P7Y32 No.2769200]

>>2769079
It really depends, I think, on how well you're able to apply the concepts taught.

[Anonymous No.2769296]

From Engineering general to Australian Maths... Lol...

[Anonymous No.2769679]

>>2769050
>>2769038
The individual steps themselves aren't too bad, the hard part is probably if you just get stuck on one part, you can't do everything that follows. Not a very good test if a lot of the credit is contingent on getting an unbroken chain of correct answers.