Maths Help?

[ppppenguin]

I think we're trying to scare Lawrence here

Who was "...very good at integral and differential calculus..." ?

[pwdrive]

The answer's 42  

Lawrence.

[Nick]

I think we're trying to scare Lawrence here

I never particularly enjoyed Vector Calculus, but it was very necessary (at the time). The really interesting areas for me centered around noise modelling and poly-dimensional hyperspheres - the Prof I had then (my tutor, John Betts) was a world authority on this stuff and used to get very excited when explaining it to us poor students.

Though my degree involved lots of this sort of thing, I've never had to use the more hairy stuff in anger even once !

[ppppenguin]

Like Nick, my degree had lots of hairy maths but have used very little since. Nothing beyond very simple calculus and complex numbers. Except for Z transforms which I've used for understanding digital filters. And a bit of control theory for PLLs.

But being exposed to Fourier transforms, vector calculus etc gave me a background which allows me to approciate what's going on in various fields even if I would struggle (or fail) to actually work in them.

[Kalee20]

That sounds highly likely likely Jeffrey...

[Kalee20]

^^^^ comment above is in response to Jeffrey's remark about three-phase system calculations generally guaranteed to be out by a factor of root-3, my mobile has only just updated with several intermediate posts now!!

[Kalee20]

Who was "...very good at integral and differential calculus..." ?

the Major General in the Pirates of Penzance?

[Nick]

Like Nick, my degree had lots of hairy maths but have used very little since. Nothing beyond very simple calculus and complex numbers. Except for Z transforms which I've used for understanding digital filters. And a bit of control theory for PLLs.

But being exposed to Fourier transforms, vector calculus etc gave me a background which allows me to approciate what's going on in various fields even if I would struggle (or fail) to actually work in them.

Almost identical - I use a bit of calculus, Z-transforms and quite a lot of Fourier transforms (DFT & FFT) - matrix theory is another area that comes up a bit...

WIthout a doubt, the best book around by a country mile is Advanced Engineering Mathematics by Stroud.

It's just such an easy and clear book to use - just love it - my only regret is that it wasn't around when I did my own degree - one of my sons did engineering at Queen's Belfast and this was a course text - as soon as I started looking at it, I bought my own copy.

Read the reviews - if you want to understand potentially complex maths from an engineering standpoint in a totally accessible way, just buy this book....

...oh, and READ it