I don't know mathS but applied for Electrical Engineering, drop out?

Lol okay so it's Maths again now.


danza said:
What level are you studying at? Level 2/3, ONC/D, HNC/D, degree? Does your college offer support sessions?

I enrolled on a Manufacturing Engineering HNC 3 years ago, and for that you have to take certain core units, some of which are the same for electrical, including some pretty nasty maths that includes integration, differentiation, long division, partial fractions, statistics, logarithms etc (some much harder than others).

I was totally crap at maths. I attended the support classes religiously and came out with a distinction in engineering science (application of mechanical and electrical principles), and a merit in analytical methods (only 10 or 15% manage more than a pass each year). I have purely mechanical priciple based maths as one of my units next year, as well as statistical process control. There's a hell of a lot of maths to get your head around, but it's by no means impossible.


Learn the very basics and build on it.
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Good to know it can be done, when you find the Maths difficult does it hamper your course progression?

m3csl2004 said:
I studied electronics at A-level, maths at A-level, and currently I'm going into the third year of my electronic engineering degree, all in Hull no less. :p

Degree level maths is difficult, A-level was hard but not terrible, the amount of that maths that as involved in electronics (at A-level) was small.

Where are you attending may I ask?
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Sweet I want to do electronics, the course I'm doing is EAL Level 2 Diploma in Mechanical Engineering Technology (QCF) Adults at Hull college. I was going to choose Electronic but it doesn't even appear to be on the list in the prospectus :confused:

http://www.hull-college.ac.uk/uploads/PDFs/Hull part time Prospectus 2011-12.pdf

Where are you doing yours? Is it fulltime?

Thanks for the links again
 
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Hmm I'm having second thoughts now about Engineering. Even if I passed everything I'd be 28+ with no experience at all.

Here in the UK most engineering companies won't even give you an interview unless you have extensive experience. There is fierce competition for jobs offered by large companies, who offer reasonable starting salaries, and they use work experience as a filter. The starting salaries in smaller companies are usually quite poor so people move away from engineering for employment.

As brewnog said engineering grads are, generally, more employable than other graduates in non-engineering roles.
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Nate Silvers said:
Hmm I'm having second thoughts now about Engineering. Even if I passed everything I'd be 28+ with no experience at all.
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Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Engineering is a solid and well respected degree and if you make it through the system, a lot of people don't, with a decent result you should be fine as far as jobs go as long as you are willing to be flexible and don't have your heart set on a specific job or specialism in a specific region of the country.

A lot of what will make you an attractive applicant for jobs will be the stuff you do outside of the degree while at uni, the extracurricular activities you participate in.
 
Nate Silvers said:
Hmm I'm having second thoughts now about Engineering. Even if I passed everything I'd be 28+ with no experience at all.
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It may be worth seeing how many EE jobs are out there right now as a rough guide, and how much experience they ask for.

I imagine EE may have a higher or lower demand compared to Civil engineering for example....
 
I read your other thread and just want to say good luck! The passion and attidude you seem to have is more than many who take the 'conventional' path of A-levels==>uni have, and will get you a long way if you keep at it! When you can show you achieved your eventual degree from a less than ideal start with pure determination to better yourself and genuine interest in the subject, you will immediately have an advantage over many disinterested graduates just going through the motions. Dont worry about your age either - many people study late or change their career paths (me kind of included - I studied electrical engineering at uni straight after school but it really wasn't for me, I didn't go into a graduate job, and spent a good while essentially trying to become a mechanical! Only now in my early 30's would I say my career has really taken off down a path I'm happy with). Do try to get summer placements or even a whole gap year placement though, as that will help get you some work experience.

As for the maths, electrical eng has some pretty heavy stuff at degree level, but the course contains maths modules that give you everything you need. I would have thought a college course would also (??), but if you aren't even at A-level standard yet then you have the right idea taking a maths course along side your engineering course, and again you seem to have the right attitude to succeed.

Best of luck!! :)
 
Nate Silvers said:
Looks like a lot need experience. One thing though...

I can't find my GCSE grades from secondary school! :confused::eek::(
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How much experience, if it's only a year then it may be worth seeing if you can do a sandwich course.

If I could go back in time 10 years then I would chosen to do an EE degree instead of my CS degree... I find tinkering with electrical things more satisfying than writing code, but I didn't find this out until I was 2 years into my course...

Regardless of what you choose, good luck, the maths may seem a little tricky at first but differential equations aren't that bad once you get the hang of it. :)
 

Thanks man first time around I was one of them students totally regret it, at the moment I have nothing to lose so even if I do fail this course at least I will learn something and even if they won't enroll me tomorrow (still can't find those GCSEs) I'm going to keep studying Maths.

I think this course does have Math modules too, at least at level 3.

Are you a Mechanical now? I wish to be in your boots in the next years, was it easy finding a job?


Mike if you do EE you could practically design anything you wanted, you know the code and you'd know how to transmit it with electric/circuits.

That Khan Academy is awesome though, I just learned addition thought I might as well start from scratch, was pretty funny when he said "oh these number can go below zero but I won't confuse you". I bet kids think addition is like differential equations to me, I hope.
 
I took electronics at A-level. I only had GCSE C in maths and was advised to take a part time maths thing along with my main courses to help me. I stopped doing the maths helper course after 2 weeks and ended up with a B at A-level, only missing out on an A because of programming in fact.

In short, don't let a little weakness in maths put you off of studying electronics. I sort of wish I'd pursued degree level electronics right now, but I let the maths put me off. Thing is, it's relevant maths and it's introduced to you slowly along with the associated area of study, so it should be quite manageable.
 
UK-AL05 said:
a^5 is the original equation.
...
5a^4.
...
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I think it would make more sense to differentiate from first principles. It can help to imagine a graph as well; remember that when differentiating, you are finding the rate of change (or the gradient of the graph)

So, if y = a^5
, imagine an extremely small change in a, and thus y as well. Call these small changes dy and da.

y+dy = (a+da)^5
The gradient of the line between the points where y = a^5 and the y value = (a+da)^5 can be worked out by finding dy/da (standard gradient of a line). As we can make da infinitely small, the dy/da we work out is the case for where y = a^5.

so expand (a+da)^5

y+dy = a^5+5 a^4 da+10 a^3 da^2+10 a^2 da^3+5 a da^4+da^5

take away y (and so a^5)

dy = 5 a^4 da+10 a^3 da^2+10 a^2 da^3+5 a da^4+da^5

dy/da = 5 a^4+10 a^3 da+10 a^2 da^2+5 a da^3+da^4

factorise again:

dy/da = 4 a^4 + 6a^3 da + 4 a^2 da^2 + a da^3 + (a+da)^4

Because da can be infinitely small, we can now treat it as 0 on the rhs:

dy/da = 4 a^4 + (a)^4

dy/da = 5a^4

I hope I did that right. Anyway, seeing differentiation done from first principles was really interesting for me, especially as up to that point I had just assumed it was some majic rule that someone had guessed years ago rather than something you could actually work out.
 
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GreatAuk said:
I think it would make more sense to differentiate from first principles. It can help to imagine a graph as well; remember that when differentiating, you are finding the rate of change (or the gradient of the graph)

So, if y = a^5
, imagine an extremely small change in a, and thus y as well. Call these small changes dy and da.

y+dy = (a+da)^5
The gradient of the line between the points where y = a^5 and the y value = (a+da)^5 can be worked out by finding dy/da (standard gradient of a line). As we can make da infinitely small, the dy/da we work out is the case for where y = a^5.

so expand (a+da)^5

y+dy = a^5+5 a^4 da+10 a^3 da^2+10 a^2 da^3+5 a da^4+da^5

take away y (and so a^5)

dy = 5 a^4 da+10 a^3 da^2+10 a^2 da^3+5 a da^4+da^5

dy/da = 5 a^4+10 a^3 da+10 a^2 da^2+5 a da^3+da^4

factorise again:

dy/da = 4 a^4 + 6a^3 da + 4 a^2 da^2 + a da^3 + (a+da)^4

Because da can be infinitely small, we can now treat it as 0 on the rhs:

dy/da = 4 a^4 + (a)^4

dy/da = 5a^4

I hope I did that right. Anyway, seeing differentiation done from first principles was really interesting for me, especially as up to that point I had just assumed it was some majic rule that someone had guessed years ago rather than something you could actually work out.
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I know its relatively the same process, but i'd be much more comfortable in showing the (f(x + h) - f(x)) / h formula, and how its describes the secant line. Then make, h go less and less and less, in a visual form until it approaches zero(Good introductory point for a limit). Then, say we want an exact answer rather than aprox. At this point we replace the functions, with the evaluated versions, and start rearranging the formula until h is removed, so it can be evaluated at zero.

I think your method is a lot more difficult in intuition.

f(x) = x^2

(f(x + h) - f(x)) / h

Explain how f(x) is the starting point, and f(x+h) is a little ahead, there is a little y difference between these, and if we divide the y difference by the x(h) difference, we get the rate of change.

Replace the functions

((x+ h) ^ 2 - x ^ 2) / h

Expand

(x^2 + xh + xh + h^2 - x^2) / h

Remove divide

x^2 + x + x + h - x^2

Cancel x^2's outs

2x + h

Evaluate when h = 0 (Infinitely small x plane difference)

Leaving 2x because h is zero, thus pointless to show

I prefer that.

Thats the same thing right?

Then explain that doing this manually every time is to long, and give them the general rules.
 
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Maths is non-negotiable for engineering. The concepts can be understood well enough without it, but every problem you solve will be set in mathematics, and solved by manipulating the equations. For example, fouriers law is that the rate of heat conduction is proportional to the temperature gradient. Set in words, there's not much to be done with it. But as Q = k* d(theta)/dx you can solve pretty much any one dimensional conduction problem.

The book you want is "mathematical methods for physics and engineering", by Riley, Hobson and Bence. It goes from basic algebra through to calculus of variations. I should be fairly good at maths by this point, and it still took me ten hours to get through (half of) the problems at the end of the first chapter.

Maths takes practice. Lots of it. I'm trying to get into the habit of spending an hour each morning on it, as getting engineering questions wrong because of mathematical inadequancy is frustrating.
 
Thanks the book looks good and much cheaper than the other suggested. It sounds like I'll need to study Maths nearly all day everyday. Just working through Khan academy practice dashboard. Are you studying ME or EE? I never knew engineers were basically geniuses, just thought they turned a few bolts here and there :eek:

Why not more than an hour a day I thought once you get fairly good at Maths it becomes a hobby?
 
Level 3 maths is pretty easy, not much (if anything) above and beyond GCSE TBH. I'd say a similar level, but more practical to the subject of study. My level 3 was a breeze and that was in Mechanical Production, although I finished that about 4 years ago. It gets a lot harder at level 4/5 (HNC/D) though, where there are mandatory units that are purely mathematics and also units which build on the maths you learn in those units to pretty much degree level.

I've always liked maths, but didn't really have a 'passion' for it until I was able to see results, which you will at college.
 
Well I've changed to Mechanical now but I'm not sure I'd enjoy it. At school we had a class called Technology which we made clocks, puzzle boxes and things. Working with drills and vices and files, cutting perspex with saws etc.

Is that engineering or something different? The prospectus doesn't explain much but I think I'll be wearing overalls from the pictures. I kinda sucked at that class, soldering and things...
 
Electrical Engineering or Electrical Installation? (not trying to be funny, but Engineering is a lot harder, I can help you if it's installation).

the maths I did was stuff like Trigonometry, Pythagoras as above slightly more in depth though than GCSE, was probably half way between A level and GCSE in terms of difficulty, but it's not that hard if you have a good teacher.
 
Doing Mechanical now but it sounds like Technology class at school, I don't wanna be fixing up cars either :\ I wasn't comfy with technology at school but I don't know if it's the same thing?
 
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Level 3 Mechanical Engineering involves (in my experience, and to my knowledge still does) study of production techniques, study of types of tooling, application of tools either by use of lathes/mills/drills/grinding machines for the production of a set project, and some mathematical study, but nothing too nasty.

Put it this way, a level 3 qualification with no experience in engineering won't likely get you a very good job in engineering. Most apprentices do level 3 or ONC/D as part of an advanced apprenticeship, so gain experience whilst learning.

What do you hope to gain from this qualification?

Oh, and mechanical shouldn't have anything to do with motor vehicles - that's a totally different subject.

As for whether it's like technology class - yes, it will be a bit like that, but (hopefully) more focused and less airy-fairy.
 
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Nate Silvers said:
Why not more than an hour a day I thought once you get fairly good at Maths it becomes a hobby?
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I'm mechanical, rather than electrical. Some subjects turn up in both, but generally to different extents. I've done lots of solid mechanics and thermodynamics, my electrical friend has done lots of electromagnetism and programming. Both need pretty much the same grasp of maths though.

I'm trying to start small. So far I'm failing to do an hour a day of maths, and can't imagine I'll ever see it as a hobby. I know a few guys who tried to convince me that integration is beautiful, but I can't see it. It's worth noting that I've recommended an undergraduate textbook designed to cover things like physics. I don't know enough about diplomas to guess what level of maths is required, but I doubt it'll be anything beyond differential equations. It's possible that standard A level maths / further maths books would be sufficient.


Nate Silvers said:
Is that engineering or something different?
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It depends what level you're looking at taking it to. The diploma should be quite hands on throughout, degrees are very theoretical for the first two or three years. I'd hope you have to design things, basing dimensions and materials selection on mathematics. Can you find any past exam papers, or lists of projects?


Engineering degrees get slightly out of hand towards the end, final year guys at my place are making a human powered aeroplane. A friend of a friend made an electric car, I believe largely from scratch. Scares the life out of me.
 
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