why is industrial engineering considered easy compared to other engineering fields?

[drusba]

<p>I know an industrial engineer and an electrical engineer that both graduated from Gtech and both agree that industrial engineering was easier in college but in listening to the differences it was like picturing one who had his head stuffed in 3 feet of concrete during his college years and the other only 2 1/2. No one should assume engineering is easy.</p>

[G.P.Burdell]

<p>It’s all relative. One person might find programming easy, and another person might find it nearly impossible to learn. Depending on which you ask, you’ll get a different opinion about which major is more difficult, which is why the “what’s the most difficult major” debate is so ridiculous.</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>

Those are not Industrial engineering classes you mentioned, I have never heard of them before. Industrial Engineering deals with as much Math, if not more than ECE. Industrial Engineers deal with advanced Stochastic and Statistics, do ECE or any other Engineers deal with such material?

</p>

<p>You’re referring to Operations Research, a field of study that is generally covered in IE departments. IE, by definition, involves more than just OR.</p>

<p>

ECE has control theory, dynamic programming, and optimization. That’s why many of the dynamic optimization superstars are EEs.

</p>

<p>Don’t know if he’d fall under the superstar category but
Stochastic Optimization prof at Purdue: <a href=“https://engineering.purdue.edu/IE/People/profile?resource_id=42289[/url]”>https://engineering.purdue.edu/IE/People/profile?resource_id=42289&lt;/a&gt;
PhD Caltech EE… so I concur </p>

<p>

Seriously, does anyone think that IE is actually harder than EE/CPE at the same school?

</p>

<p>I don’t. But go see the thread about ice cream… lots of good info.</p>

<p>

I know an industrial engineer and an electrical engineer that both graduated from Gtech and both agree that industrial engineering was easier in college but in listening to the differences it was like picturing one who had his head stuffed in 3 feet of concrete during his college years and the other only 2 1/2. No one should assume engineering is easy.

</p>

<p>Concur. Never once have I thought I’d have an easier time in EE/ECE, but I do often think I’d be better off running head first into a wall.</p>

[Bowlesman]

<p>purduefrank and bilind2007,
if you look in the catalog for berkeley, IEOR 170 and 171 are the classes i mentioned. 171 is crosslisted with business 105, so it indeed doesn’t sound like IE.
purdue- i’m taking “engineering economics” next semester, the textbook is titled corp finance. and with regards to the acceptance rate, cal engineering admits by major- eecs has the lowest acceptance rate.
bilind- i’ll be taking stat and linear optimization eventually for an EECS signals processing/ communications concentration. i’m overlapping them with IEOR minor.</p>

[QwertyKey]

<p>G.P.Burdell, can you name a few colleges (or whichever ones you can think of) that have their IE as a CS/Math Hybrid, and which ones you say are OR focused? I just want to see what the curriculum is and how different they are.</p>

<p>Also, what you think of Michigan’s IOE program?</p>