I think one of the biggest problems for engineering students is that the maths is too often taught in abstraction, which makes it difficult to understand what the point is much of the time. In my experience, it's often been the case that the maths only started to make sense when I tried to solve a real engineering problem with it.
There are many areas in electronics where you *can* get by with past experience and a "seat-of-the pants" approach, and simulation does have its place, but the ever increasing reliance these days on simulation troubles me. IMO there's no substitute for a sufficient understanding of the underlying maths to be able to do it longhand if you have to.
Thus the MIT method... math necessary for the engineering topic at hand is taught (in a math class) at the same time.
So I'm still a wiz at Calculus though I rarely use it.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Ooops! I missed the "Master's". What university was this ?:-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Sturm-Liouville_theory is the mathematical basis for very much in modern physics including electronics. Most of us know about Fourier Analysis. How would we deal with e.g feedback in control systems without Fourier Analysis or Laplace transforms?
My dream is to cut a piece of that wire and curl it into a helix. The day I have succeeded with this, I will probably need help from your friend, unless Helmholtz and Heaviside can help me ;-)
My web coffee supplier, coffeewhiz.com, has recently changed to coffeewiz.com ;-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Bessel functions (and Legendre polynomials) are also used as basis functions in some curve fitting applications -- some of the fancier RF modeling programs will let you create a continuous function from, e.g., S-parametmer data using regular old rational polynomial or something fancier like Legendre or Bessel.
The communication guys occasionally throw in erfc() when they're dealing with bit error rates, although I think in every case I've seen it actually makes the equation somewhat messier because of the additional scaling constants that need to be thrown in.
The guys who wrote the first cut of programs such as HFSS, CST, EMpower, etc. (all field solvers of various types) all required some high-powered mathematics. Even SPICE gets pretty fancy when you're trying to obtain really good convergence...
Not to be a wet blanket, but as least in my college curriculum the *signal processing* class assumed you had already gone through the long-winded lectures and exercises on Fourier (back in a "signals and systems" class) and also just had a "quick review."
I had an analog electronics class where the professor, on multiple occasions, would answer questions by saying, "You should have learned that back in EE
102!" (or some comparably low-numbered course) -- I imagine that's how he'd have handled your query. Not very diplomatic, but often true.
OK, now I'm starting to think you just went to a bad school.
That being said, I had another professor who once said, "you have to know everything before you can know anything," and there is some truth to that -- things like Laplace transforms have enough nuances that, even if your goal is to be an expert with them, it's arguably better to learn a little about them,
*use* them for awhile, and *then* go back for a more in-depth study rather than trying to have an exhaustively in-depth lecture about them first.
Even as a kid I remember thinking to myself, "hmm... shouldn't there be a more direct route to producing a picture than making the VCR act like a TV transmitter? I bet it would create a better picture that way..."
IIRC the big difference is that John can breadboard, I can't.
...Jim Thompson
-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |
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| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
for about ONE-THIRD of the PCB set-up I used back then.
Now-a-days the device count and operating speeds preclude such convenience, so I must simulate only.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
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