Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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To start off, Anerin, if you are reading I know what you mean. An engineer who doesn't use algebra.
I can design and build an electronic device. Analog.
In an analog, regular bipolar junction transistor amplification stage there is a formula to calculate the input impedance. The variables include collector load impedance, and whatever resistance or other is in the emitter circuit along with the hfe of the transistor.
Well the big formula is gibberish to me. But I can isolate the components of the formula because I have a solid understanding of the principles involved. So some math whiz can take a scientific calculator and figure out in seconds what might take me a half hour.
With the frequency at which I need to figure this out, it is simply not worth it for me to learn algebra and calculus. Better to spend that half hour to figure it out the hard way rather than spend years in school.
Things have made me realize a few facts. And this may come as a surprise, but really numbers have nothing to do with math. Numbers simply represent a quantity. Algebra and calculus are simply language, expressive of true math yes, but not indicative of any specific quantity. An algebraic equation is analogous to a poem, or a sentence formed with words.
Once you know that language they can express many mathematical relationships to you, and if they express them right and you read them right, you understand what they mean.
Nowadays I need a calculator for everything, although I can still do mental math my brain doesn't want to. But I used to be a math tutor in school. But then later I had a blind math teacher. No kidding. His name was Kemmit, and he did a surprisingly good job considering he was blind. But he lost me on those matrices.
Any teacher would have lost me on that. I was not ready for it, it is that simple.
I learned many other things. How do you tell if a car jumped time ? How many degrees can you turn the crankshaft backwards until the camshaft moves ? If it is more than X degrees it probably did, as that indicated that the slack in the timing chain is sufficient to let a gear tooth pass. Thus the jumped time. Exact figures ? Hell no. But if you can move the crank ten degrees before the cam moves, it probably jumped time. Pontiacs were famous for that in the 60s and 70s.
How do you tell if something you are building is square ? Well that'sthe old three forty five rule. Measure three foot out from one corner, four foot out the other way and measure between those two points. It should be five feet.
Both of these things were taught to me a very long time ago by highschool dropouts. Most of my friends dropped out, and some do very well. I dropped out, but the job I got taught me more. One graduate among our crowd, well, he couldn't balance a checkbook at gunpoint. In fact his brother, an IT professional took to balancing it and found he had a few grand in there he didn't even know about.
But things went to shit again after that, and eventually I had to tell him to stop using that account for a couple months and then close it. This is simple addition and subtraction. He just can't do it.
On the other hand we got my dropout buddy, called into the office at work to help figure out a $600,000 job.
Sometimes at work, it is simply impossible to do the job right, and I have to do a modification. We must make the voltage at this IC pin 4.7, no more no less. Then I have to figure conductance, mhos in fact. One over four point seven K, one over five pouint six K and so forth. X>M. MR and so forth. They are sometimes amazed, but so what.
Actually analog electronics is becoming a lost art, everything is digital now. Calculating the input impedance has been replaced with the philosophy of just feeding it with a lower impedance source. Producing different voltage levels is no longer done by careful calculation, they just use a shitload of transistors and precision resistors. Everything is either on or off. The linear mode of operation is avoided like the plague.
And the reason for that is that they do not want to do the math. Looking at the design of even a cheap OP AMP you can see (if you know what you are doing) that they have strived to remove all the variables. The concept is now "This circuit will work with a wide range of variables, this transistor can have an hfe of 200 and this one could be 10, it'll work, if the opposite is true, it will still work, and this whole thing is compensated for temperature automatically, so no matter what it will work".
You wonder why some music equipment is so damn expensive ? I will tell you. It is because the engineers cannot swat a fly with a Sherman tank, somebody out there has to do some math, higher math.
There are some other aspects of electronics where this applies. You can see it by the cost. It is not just what the engineer makes, it is the extensive product development. This is why you can tell by the price.
Let's put it this way, there are new guitars, with nothing other than their base intrinsic value, and they cost more than a plasma TV. Well, a plasma TV is designed by a computer, a guitar is designed by a person who must know what the fuck they are doing.
Automation has gotten to the point where our perception of intelligence is slewed. We marvel at the fact that they can find one pot plant in a forty acre cornfield, and no longer appreciate the work that went into making a piano for example.
We like where the cupholder is in the car, but have no idea of how an internal combustion engine works. We muse about HDTV, not knowing how regular TV used to work. We are losing our technological roots, and this is happening in a country that used to be the world leader, who put a Man on the moon, who can strike anywhere anytime on the whole planet.
Just what are we ?
T
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New math thread, and then some. - 
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