The math/physics is still important, but as a cost of doing business. It’s an entry-level boundary condition that separates engineering from vocational technician skills.
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That divide btw is an interesting one. Somehow industrialization created a vocational layer mostly sealed off from engineering. Welders, machinists, electronics assembly people, plumbers,… a vast universe of technicians who can get away with very limited math/physics.
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Industrial vocations are partly descended from artisan trades, partly, artificial constructs like video games. You may intuit physics of wood if you do woodworking, but there’s no chance a minimum wage circuit assembler can intuit semiconductor physics with no textbooks.
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Venkatesh Rao (田 ) Retweeted Naia Bouscal
Yeah, good point. There is “infrastructure fluency” in a few key tools (like a soldering iron) but in general, fluency is neither a thing in engineering, nor particularly central. You *expect* work to feel awkward and non-fluent half the time.https://twitter.com/nbouscal/status/1401266380893261824 …
Venkatesh Rao (田 ) added,
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Venkatesh Rao (田 ) Retweeted alexis
Another good point. Advanced math starts to feel like extremely discriminating stamp collecting. Once you get past foundations and basic skills, all the action is in the “rare stamp” theorems that are *both* true and important in the ocean of unimportant trivial truths.https://twitter.com/alexisgallagher/status/1401262491330514944 …
Venkatesh Rao (田 ) added,
alexis @alexisgallagherReplying to @vgrI suspect some parts of math are like this, and others not. I remember an undergrad prof characterizing graph theory as the "area in which it is possible to pose an unlimited number of unimportant but new theorems." This, he said, is why it was the topic used in summer schools.1 reply 1 retweet 14 likesShow this thread -
For example, early in linear algebra/control theory you learn about the Cayley-Hamilton theorem, an important “stamp.” A non-trivial AND important truth as in lots of important stuff depends on it. Like a breadboard or a drill in making.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayley–Hamilton_theorem …
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One of the reasons I didn’t get far in math is that though I was good at the raw skills like manipulating trigonometric identities or differentiation or Laplace transform mechanics, I never developed a “taste” for how to wield the important and charismatic theorems/equations.
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Things like the CHT or say the Brouwer fixed-point theorem are like temperamental tools with strong “personalities” (think soldering iron) that give you superpowers once you master them. I’m citing these because they are among the few I *did* gain some literacy in.
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By contrast, I gave up on topology after the first grad course because it is just *full* of such things. Topology is the “fantastic beasts and where to find them” part of math. Really advanced stamp collecting. If I understand correctly, Grothendieck was a sort of Newt Scamander.
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Venkatesh Rao (田 ) Retweeted Alan Martin
I’m possibly doing an injustice to music and martial arts here, but I think they’re closer to Euclidean geometry than engineering. As in, the combinatorial space covers most of it, and what isn’t covered is more subconsciously/tacitly learnable.https://twitter.com/epithetos/status/1401271301533319169 …
Venkatesh Rao (田 ) added,
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if you read bruce lee he points out that katas are just as bad in martial arts
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