That's kind of where I was going with this. Instead of burning all of that time ...

Cobord · on Oct 10, 2018

Consider symplectic integrators. You would never come up with them or realize the problem of energy drift if you hadn't first paid attention to the fundamentals of the geometry and calculus underlying the problem.

This is just my favorite example, but it illustrates how understanding the fundamentals also explains the gotchas. Just getting a feel for them through experience is again just black magic by building up a table of what to use when without the generalizing principle behind it.

jstewartmobile · on Oct 10, 2018

Never said to do away with the fundamentals. Will say that most symbolic differentiation and integration (which is a big chunk of the coursework) is not fundamental as much as it is fruitless busywork.

Even so, I spent a year of my time--and God knows how much of other people's money--grinding out the mathematical equivalent of crossword puzzles so I could get my job certificate--just like every other engineer.

Use that same time to apply the fundamentals to numerical methods, and you get to go in far more interesting directions--like symplectic integrals, or chaos theory.

BeetleB · on Oct 10, 2018

>Never said to do away with the fundamentals. Will say that most symbolic differentiation and integration (which is a big chunk of the coursework) is not fundamental as much as it is fruitless busywork.

It's no more busywork than being able to multiply two single digit numbers in your head. Whether it's useful to your job really depends on the job. I had a job once in the engineering industry. When we were in meetings discussing projects, if you could not do those types of analyses (e.g. asymptotic behavior of certain Calc II type integrals) in your head, you would not know what's going on. Sure, everyone could explicitly show all the steps for your benefit, but you'd be slowing everyone down.