On 11/16/09 08:59, scott wrote:
> You'd be surprised how many industries require specialist knowledge :-)
> For example, I suspect the structural engineer that designed your
> building did plenty of calculations using calculus to estimate stresses
> based on the loading (simple cases can be looked up in tables, but
> anything unusual needs to be worked out manually). Ditto for an
> electrical engineer who designed the power supply for your computer, the
> DCDC converter in your mobile phone and numerous other circuits -
> without an understanding of calculus you're going to be totally lost.

	I somewhat doubt it.

	Often, calculus is used in developing the theory. Then the rest is 
simply approximations or computers.

	When I was taking a statics course, the professor taught us how to 
calculate the center of mass by taking the shape, splitting up into 
triangles, calculating the center of mass of each (formula for 
triangles), and taking the weighted average.

	He never once mentioned the generic integral formulation. I asked him 
why. He said, "That's good stuff to know if you're going to grad 
school/academia, but in the real world, you almost never have the actual 
function to integrate."

	Which is mostly true. Of course, it's a stretch to say no one in 
industry uses calculus, but it's a tiny tiny minority.

> Of course computers can simulate and calculate stuff for you, but you're
> going to look a right idiot if you need to run ten 12 hour simulations
> to decide the correct structure or capacitor size when your colleague
> can work it out exactly in a few minutes with a piece of paper.

	If your colleague can work it out quickly on paper, it shouldn't take 
long to do it on a computer (Maple, Mathematica, etc). Just because it's 
computers doesn't mean it has to be a finite element  or Monte Carlo 
calculation. Additionally, if it's routine enough, there are handbooks...

-- 
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

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