Life with an EE Education

[samwell7]

In the exams I took, problems often included extraneous information, and it was our task to pick out what was relevant to finding the answer. Because that's how it works in the real world. A major difference from the real world was, of course, that the problems were in fact solvable by analytical methods.


That's why good testers are worth their weight in gold.

The uni problems would include extra information as you've said, but not to the level of the real-world and it was fairly easy to see what was needed and what wasn't (especially if you'd been studying).

Regarding the testers, definitely worth a massive amount, I vividly remember when we developed a SCADA system for a plant in my earlier role.
We took turns trying to 'break' it by clicking various things that we wouldn't see as normal, the system seemed fine to us, we gave it to a few of the actual operators to use during SAT and they'd found dead pages within minutes! I learnt a lot that day!

 

[mansr]

The uni problems would include extra information as you've said, but not to the level of the real-world and it was fairly easy to see what was needed and what wasn't (especially if you'd been studying).

Well, in the real world, you have all possible information. Attempting to replicate that in an exam question isn't reasonable. What they sometimes did was provide information that precisely matched an equation or two from the book (exams were often open-book). Those who hadn't studied would then mindlessly solve for the unknown and get an utterly wrong answer. Having studied, one would easily recognise the relevant parts and use the proper equations. It worked quite well, in my experience.

 

[samwell7]

Well, in the real world, you have all possible information. Attempting to replicate that in an exam question isn't reasonable. What they sometimes did was provide information that precisely matched an equation or two from the book (exams were often open-book). Those who hadn't studied would then mindlessly solve for the unknown and get an utterly wrong answer. Having studied, one would easily recognise the relevant parts and use the proper equations. It worked quite well, in my experience.

Ha! Nothing like a good trick question, are you an educator?

 

[mansr]

Ha! Nothing like a good trick question, are you an educator?

Not beyond having been a part-time teacher's assistant while I was studying.

 

[RayDunzl]

Second lesson from working as an EE was realising that it almost doesn't matter how well you design or engineer something, end-users will nearly always find a way to do it wrong, giving rise to the importance of thinking way outside the box in to how somebody could approach a product/system/plant and putting extra protections/fail-safes/poka-yoke in place.

Not an EE here, but was a Tech with an honorary title of Engineer so folks who were inclined to do so for whatever reason wouldn't.

I became a go to guy to break stuff and come up with usable procedures for Customers and other Techs to follow (Big Iron Digital Telecom).

Me: "What happens if we do this?"
EE/SE: "You can't do that!"
Me: "Well, I just did."
EE/SE: "Oh. What happened?"

 

[wwenze]

I wish I can have that kind of conversation.

My current job role is closer to:

Customer: "We did this (datasheet) an it doesn't work"
Me: "Let me see..."
Me: "..."
Me: "Mmm ok let me get back to you on that"

And this is probably true for most new technology these days.

 

[samwell7]

Not an EE here, but was a Tech with an honorary title of Engineer so folks who were inclined to do so for whatever reason wouldn't.

I became a go to guy to break stuff and come up with usable procedures for Customers and other Techs to follow (Big Iron Digital Telecom).

Me: "What happens if we do this?"
EE/SE: "You can't do that!"
Me: "Well, I just did."
EE/SE: "Oh. What happened?"

At first it's quite a difficult mindset to get into, especially if you designed the system/circuit but it is definitely worth doing (or in your case, finding an expert to do it).
I remember finding an issue with a relatively standard motor control cabinet circuit where we'd induce relay chatter by pushing the 'lamp test' button while one of the fault indication lamps was active from a fault, resulted in a slightly more complex circuit but a far more robust one!