<p>Frankly, math is not my strongest subject but I love finding out how things work. So i was wondering which types of engineering requires the least amount of mathematical ability?</p>
<p>Probably biomedical, environmental, or civil engineering. </p>
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<p>This is more important than being good at math for engineering.</p>
<p>Materials Science and Engineering doesn’t involve a lot of math.</p>
<p>good advice silence</p>
<p>Math is a secondary tool for engineers and is truly only used for monetary reasons. before the advent of major corporations and all sorts of business efficiencies, engineers were more of designers and implementers, rather than the science minded folk they are now. Engineers would see what others have done before them as well as having their ow projects. Though these projects would be based mostly on intuition. </p>
<p>You certainly don’t need math to do most things that engineers do, but to keep projects as cheap as possible we need math. </p>
<p>Think of math as a tool that can only aid you. You don’t need to be good at math, as most engineers really don’t even use math. You do need to understand math and understand what is going wrong so you know what to input to the computer and to understand the results the computer gives. Just try and understand it and do your best. Getting a A in calculus is not going to determine if you are a good engineer or not.</p>
<p>what about physics guys? which engineering requires the least physics?</p>
<p>I disagree with some of the posters above me. The type of engineering that I studied (mechanical engineering) required an advanced understanding of some mathematic concepts without which you would not have been able to understand many of the classes.</p>
<p>Engineering is an academic discipline. “Tinkering” and “finding out how things work” is not going to help you when you are designing structures or doing calcualtions that could kill people if they are not accurate. While that kind of attitude helps, mathematical competance is vital to being able to do your job. Remember screwing up could leave multiple people dead.</p>
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That statement scares me. Imagine people designing our airplanes, cars, or reparing our bridges not being good at math …I really would not want to live in that place.</p>
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<p>Computer engineering is practically no physics once you get to the compE courses. There are areas of electrical engineering (communications, signal processing, control) that are very far removed from the physics. Industrial engineering has very little to do with physics as well.</p>
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<p>My point was that if you truly have a passion for learning how things work, you’ll be willing to learn the mathematics that describe the how.</p>
<p>Undergrad courses don’t delve THAT deep into what you need to know. So even though you would rather avoid math, the truth is that calculus, linear, and diffeq are BASIC if you wanna be any good. If being good means ‘I have a job, don’t worry about what I actually do’ then you can do whatever you want. Cuz every GPA gets a job.</p>
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<p>What world do you live in? That’s like saying authors don’t use grammar and rhetoric.</p>
<p>i know plenty of civil and structural engineers who haven’t touched math in the 20-30 years they have been practicing. You plug some numbers into the computer and it spits out a result. Thats it. or you put in some numbers and it minimizes the solution and tells you how to do it.</p>
<p>Engineers used to build bridges, buildings , tunnels, even electronics with absolutely no math. You put it together, and build it strong enough so it wont fail. This system worked and worked very well. The problem was that projects costed much more this way, then they do today. </p>
<p>As an example, we can make a bridge and build one with the same skills architects have. We can used incredibly strong reliant materials which are very expensive. Though the price of doing it this way is very expensive. If we use math we can calculate to a pretty good certainty, the absolute cheapest way we can make this bridge. </p>
<p>As I said Math is in Engineer for the sole reason of keeping projects cheap.</p>
<p>I have many friends who are PE’s and they always joke how they never use 90% of what they learned in school. My uncle a Civil engineer doesn’t even know how to take the integral of t^2 any more. There is absolutly no reason for them to know it. Oh and he builds buildings in Newark NJ.</p>
<p>I have to say here, that from my courses, I have learned that there are going to be certain courses that are simply difficult to like, and this can be from many reasons, which I’ll skip. However, and yes I’m a chemical engineer, I find that math is present in almost every aspect of engineering. </p>
<p>So if you don’t like it, I trust it that you’re probably not very strong in it. This could lead to some pretty major problems down the line. </p>
<p>The way my school works is that there is a core math curriculum that every engineering student must take no matter the major. Then there is further math within the course work of the specific major. So, in reality, there really isn’t an engineering major “with the least math” at my school.</p>
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<p>Granted this may be partially true, engineers need to know the math to refute the computer’s results. Computers are never 100% accurate, and if you don’t know the math, then you can never verify its results. Ask aibarr, a regular Structural Engineer around here. I’ve read many accounts on this board of her doing what I’ve just described. Try the stability in the accuracy of CFD for example. By the way, who made these computers that just “spit out results”? Engineers? Aliens?</p>
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<p>I have no idea where you got this assumption from, a history book? Do you have any idea of the engineering process, or are you just reciting things you’ve heard family members whom are engineers say? It’s not just all trial and error, that would be very inefficient.</p>
<p>It’s our policy in our firm to run hand calculations to check computer output. To do otherwise would be unwise. It’s too easy to enter info incorrectly into computer programs. Programs also make assumptions at times that we weren’t expecting and give erroneous results. Birdeye, you are incorrect in your statement that structural engineers don’t use math. We have pages and pages of math calculations on every project.</p>
<p>Working from the construction side, I see lots of calculations that structural engineers submit. There’s pages and pages of detailed calculations for each connection design. I also remember seeing 70 pages of hand written calculations from a geotechnical engineer for a retaining wall.</p>
<p>Saying that we don’t use 90% of what we learn in school is a different matter, and the validity of this statement depends on the field you go into. I was an intern in a traffic engineering firm and typically there’s only 1 course in a civil engi0neering curriculum dedicated to this discipline. Throw in a calc/probability course and a physics course, and you probably have the 10% you do use. Structural engineering is very different in this aspect (and I’ll let the experts here talk about that).</p>
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<p>Thats why I said in my origional post for this thread that math is a secondary tool. One need not master math, but needs to understand how and why things are what they are. Im not saying you dont to know the math, Im just saying that you don’t need to be a master of it like a scientist or a academic. </p>
<p>Some people need to know the math, but they are usually programmers or math majors. Specific people need to know the material, but the applicators usually dont need to know the fundamentals. </p>
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<p>Been a engineer for about 4 yrs and took a engineering/Math history class in university. Math was only implemented into engineering when efficiency’s were actually started to be considered around the 1850’s.</p>
<p>DD is a bioengineerin major…she had a LOT of math courses required of her major…full calculus sequence, differential equations, and two others that I (the mom) don’t know the names of. In addition…lots of math in her science/engineering courses.</p>
<p>She may not “need” math once she starts a job in engineering, but she does NEED math to get her degree.</p>
<p>environmental engineering requires the least math.</p>
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<p>With your earlier usage of engineering used in “electronics”…</p>
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<p>… I wasn’t under the assumption that you were referring to >100 years ago. There weren’t really any electronics around back then (Edison’s light bulb wasn’t until post 1850). Go too much further back in time and the application of mathematics doesn’t exist because many fundamental things have yet to be proven. </p>
<p>But no, that’s not completely true. Try the Egyptian pyramids. Math was used there.</p>
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<p>On the contrary, the fundamentals are essential for them to know how to manipulate… just not the long tedious derivations.</p>
<p>Yeah if you don’t like/excel at math then maybe engineering isn’t the BEST option. So far everything I have seen/read with engineering involves an understanding of math. I’d hate to be the bearer of bad news but if you don’t like math then maybe you should consider other avenues. Now I agree, liking to figure out things is perfect. Just make sure you keep your avenues and options open. Who knows…maybe you can adapt to the math load just fine. But then on the other hand…maybe you won’t. Personally, I would continue pursuing engineering(which ever engineering specialty u pick is up to u. But I would say environmental is the least math oriented.) with some sort of backup plan. </p>
<p>Just make sure whatever you do, don’t rely on just one person’s advice. Take my advice and everyone else’s advice on here with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>This statement pretty much sums up my thoughts:
“Engineering is an academic discipline. “Tinkering” and “finding out how things work” is not going to help you when you are designing structures or doing calcualtions that could kill people if they are not accurate. While that kind of attitude helps, mathematical competance is vital to being able to do your job. Remember screwing up could leave multiple people dead.”
I think they nailed right on the head. props to carnelian.</p>