Everyone here always hates on "high school math" but during all my time in engineering I've never used anything more...

Not OP, but we're doing basic differential equations in my hs math class right now. This is from the textbook we use for higher level math in the IB program (a program that I and many other high school kids around the world happen to be a part of). Take a look at chapter 3. No one's full of shit.

You're retarded. Your program is the exception, not the norm

clearly you don't study electrical engineering, or physics, or basically anything that actually requires more than HS math to describe reality (heck, most shit after calculus was applied to physics)

Damn! You're ahead of the curve kid. I remember I struggled with basic trig in high school. I didn't even learn what a limit was until I was in my second year of college.

I also took calc 3 and diff eq in high school, but at a math and science charter high school so again not the norm

Try doing actual research
>error correction, cryptography
need a strong understanding of modern algebra
>deep learning research
i'm not talking about memeing with prebuilt frameworks, i'm talking about refining or creating new techniques. needs a very high level of statistics, optimization
>signal processing research
need complex analysis, probability, statistics.

the "engineers" you are talking about are just average dudes.
"process engineer" = foreman, "software engineer" = code monkey.

Google "computers" and be amazed.

I mean any differential equation. linear or nonlinear. arbitrary dimension.
>PDEs are highschool level
confirmed idiot
missing arbitrary dimensionality.

on the whole, differential equations is big enough to do a PhD thesis on without even getting deep into it.

Not saying it's the norm. Just saying that any mathematically motvated highschool student could do it. I go to a public magnet school in philly lol.

>condense an entire upper division class into 1 chapter for high school

You might get the gist of it, but idk if it means anything.

the percentage of highschoolers motivated to study that level of math is infinitesimally small
the "i did x class in highschool" meme needs to die already, it just discourages people

So do you disagree that high school math is a fucking joke?

Eh. Idk about infinitesimal. It's over 10,000 kids taking this course. I see what you mean though. Aren't the same things taught in an AP Calculus class? Over 100,000 kids take that in America.

Yeah. I know. It's just the very basics.

>he didn't take AP calc and AP calc 2 in high school

Wew

Yep. I'm like the other 95% of people that had no exposure to calculus in high school.

I have used Z transforms (control theory and digital filtering) and Zernike polynomials (adaptive optics basically cancelling atmospheric image distortion ) at work. These are way above high school maths.

Differential equations are in the British A level syllabus which is the last year of our high school.

>during all my time in engineering I've never used anything more complex than calculus
EE here. This simply shows you're never really done any proper research work. If you consider yourself a researcher then I bet you simply run simulations and presents the results as "research". Plenty of people in academia do that.

what the fuck

don't they atleast teach you how to do the power rule?

Where the fuck do you live?

Did all that in high school other than Fourier

In Britain you do if you're doing A level Maths

What engineering are you? You can't say something vague, aerospace and industrial and vastly different.

> during all my time in engineering I've never used anything more complex than calculus.

I'd like a big mac and fries, Mr. Engineer OP(is a fag).

As a mechanical engineer, every time I try to do something interesting, I'm greeted with a differential algebraic system.

I used to believe this world was beautiful.

out of how many millions? yeah, most scrubs only take basic algebra and trig

> I'm greeted with a differential algebraic system.
Interesting yet I die a little every time.
Real world complexity is staggering.

research is research, but only a small fraction of staff engineers in any subject in the real world ever do that.

You are designing electronic circuits for specific sensors... ok maybe some advanced EE math there, but computers are used for the majority of tasks and what is really required is the use of critical thinking skills learned in school.

I can say that the majority of the math learned even in advanced engineering/math classes is useless in the real world because the majority of cases where they might be needed someone already developed tools and programs to make them easier to work with, and you just use those. Only a very small fraction works on the cutting edge, using mathematical models to approximate observations or to design to specs.

That's awesome, but covering one chapter of the introductory material just to motivate calculus isn't the same as taking a full-semester course. When people talk about taking DEs, that isn't what they are talking about. The "DE in highschool" thing is a meme about how American education is miles behind Europe and Asia, where apparently you learn linear algebra and differential equations (with proofs) in high school, as in full college classes focusing only on that subject. Personal experience shows otherwise at least for Germany lol. It's literally just a meme.

Same guy as . That's cool. Thinking about going to college in the area?

Aerospace stress engineer, can confirm
Shit in school that is actually useful to me:
>mechanics of material
>undergrad-level FEM class
>grad-level FEM class
>grad-level fatigue and damage tolerance
Though the rest of college is good for general math and engineering knowledge that comes in handy

>EE here
No, you're an EE grad student

Oops, I meant .

Are you a researcher? I study engineering and research has always caught my attention, but I don't really know how hard it is to start working on it. I don't want to be part of the "average dudes" group that you speak of. Any tips?

Only in further maths, so not the norm.

>engineering
>never used anything more complex than calculus

It has been verified boys

Are you retarded?

I took some engineering classes in University and once you get past baby tier Problems, you will be completely and utterly fucked without mathematicians and Numerics.

Sure, you might not need some advanced topology, but try solving a DE your teacher has not carefully prepared, so that you can easily solve it.
Or do you seriously think that in real life you still will only have systems of 5 linear equations which you can solve in your head?

>This is all high school stuff
Surely they tell you in high school how to solve an eigenvalue problem of a 1000x1000 Matrix.

Yeah. I'm almost excusively looking at schools in the area. I'd really love to go to UPenn, but we'll see.

Good luck, it's pretty tough getting in. I want to end up there in a few years for my masters or phd in applied math/cs, but need to work for a little while after graduating to pay off debt. I'll graduate from drexel in the spring (ee/ce major) so if you have any questions about that school/program lmk.

Yeah actually! What's the financial aid there like? How much debt are you in? Are you from philly? I'd like to major in math btw. Do you know anyone in the math program? How is it? How's the quarter system? (Lot's of questions lol.)

I wish I had a whiteboard this size and instead of ladders, a pneumatic platform.

Depends. In eastern yuropoor we do pretty rigorous treatment of PDEs on highschools that focus on math, but you need to take the class (seminar on mathematics) and these are topics you do last year. In 4 years of the class, we cover some abstract algebra, a hint of universal algebra, some mandatory point set topology, linear algebra that's worth about a semester on good uni, but we get to do tensors and bilinear forms too. The level at which we cover topics differs, ranging from "this shit isn't even worth a homework on umi" to "you can now skip this semester on umi", but we get some exposure to both theory and practice.

computers do all the hard work m8

Even if tools have made the mechanical portion of solving a problem unnecessary, understanding the underlying operations really helps give you a intuition for the system.

Sorry for the blog post, just want to make sure I answer your questions fully.

Financial aid varies but in general is alright. My brother was offered a full ride with 4.2 or whatever the max GPA is w/ AP classes, very high ACT scores and something like 1900 SAT. I wasn't given much because my grades were trash, but I had pretty decent SAT scores (2100). One thing to note is that they make you stay on campus for a year or two unless you live in the area and can commute from home. If you don't care much about the "traditional college experience in a dorm" (I sure as hell didn't) then that's an easy way to cut 10-15k off of yearly expenses, between dorm fees and the meal plan. They are horribly over-priced. Also, factor in coop salary to the tuition, and it isn't quite as bad.

I'm pretty ashamed to say I have ~80k of private debt right now. I would have had more if I didn't find a job with the DoD, which has a sweet deal where they pay for your school if you work for them afterwards. The traditional advice is to avoid going to a school if it'll put you in more debt than a safe estimate for your starting salary after school, which I think is good if you plan on going to industry. If you plan on going straight to grad school then you should probably be more selective? I'm not sure.

cont

I grew up about an hour outside of philly and have lived here my whole life. I don't know anyone in the math program, but I am minoring in math so between that and what I already had to take for EE and CE classes I've been in a good amount of math department classes. In general the quality of classes has been pretty good. You aren't going to get the same level of rigor in classes as you would at upenn, obviously, but depending on what you want to do I think drexel is a pretty good choice. You have 18 months of co-op to fill, so I don't think it's hard to get involved in undergraduate research. Coops also give you a chance to get a "real job" if you are into that. Basically I think drexel lets you keep your options open; you have a lot of time to explore what you want to do long-term, whether it's grad school or a certain industry, and you're well prepared for either of those.

Quarter system moves fast lol, but it's not a big enough deal to consider really. You'll be a little stressed, and it really blows not having breaks longer than 2-3 weeks, and not being on the same schedule as your old high school friends. I think the co-op makes that worth it though. A lot of my friends that graduated are still kind of floundering around, but I am secured into a sweet government job doing programming, signal processing, and now some machine learning too.

tl;dr If it comes down to drexel or another school (not upenn), I'd choose drexel unless they really cheap out on your aid. If you want to get a "real job" then drexel will set you up much better than most other schools will, but I'm not really qualified to talk about applications to grad schools/phd programs. I'd imagine your school choice at that point wouldn't matter as much, as long as you do some good research, and have solid grades/recommendations/gre scores.

Wow. Very informative. Thanks!

Idk what the hell you're trying to say.
Everyone already knows engineers are the plebs of STEM

The terminology is different to what I'm used to but a lot of this seems like what's on the standard UK high school level maths (A-level 17-18 for ages, GSCE 15-16 just now, but I don't know how much) fyi.

AP calc definitely did not include differential equations when I was in hs, admittedly 10 years ago.

>sauce: got 5 on BC calc; took differential equations in undergrad

>Engineering research

Literally kill yourself. All the people doing this are mondo autists who couldn't design anything for shit.

Yeah, the only time as an engineer that you'll use math is when you are working with real objects so your use of pure math will be near 0.

As if you can always describe real world problems with the smooth functions you see in calculus.
At least read a decent PDE or Fourier analysis book before make assumptions