Thanks Mike good first time post
I fully appreciate why you dropped out of your electronics degree, maths, Arggh...
Been there, it's not that I couldn't do the maths it was just the way that some subjects were taught. They teach you fundamental principles from a mathematical point of view rather than from a practical point of view, but how the hell are you supposed to teach electronics from a practical point of view.
Back in the day from the 1950's and perhaps up to the 1970's there were a lot of practical "teach yourself" courses advertised in popular electronics magazines. It was hands on with a soldering iron and if you were lucky you would end up with a working valve scope with a 3" CRT. I don't know if the courses were any good and I'm not sure if they were accredited, it would interesting to see some of the course material. Maybe you might get an intuative grasp of how things work and the curious student would look into a bit more detail which would of course involve some mathematics.
Nowadays perhaps electronics degrees are in some ways a lot easier because you've got access to free tools to do the math for you, MATLAB if you're a student or Octave if you're not a registered as a student. Then there are simulators like Pspice or LTspice which weren't available 30 or so years ago.
I think the best way to teach electronics is from a practical hands on approach and then you can learn a lot intuitively. A good engineer will also understand the underlying principles behind what they are doing and more often than not that will involve some mathematics. On the other hand the lazy engineer who hasn't go a scoobydo will cut and paste hardware or code and then drop it in someone elses lap when it doesn't work. Anyway, Arduinos are cool but they don't teach you good software engineering.
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