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| A philosophical question - Is lateral thinking a valued trait in engineering? |
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| e100:
(Apologies for a rambling post, flame away if need be, but I think it's an interesting topic.) Is lateral thinking a valued trait in engineering, or to put it another way can you get through an engineering degree and whole career by memorizing everything you have been taught but have no ability to think outside the box? I once saw someone describe engineering as "approximate applied math for profit" and when presented with a problem you draw upon your knowledge to figure out what math is needed to come up with a solution that is 'good enough' to make money. It doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough. But what if the problem falls outside of the scope of everything you have been taught? You are now in a zone where books aren't going to help you. How are you going to come up with a solution? |
| penfold:
Yes and no. Engineering education does involve simply issuing a lot of facts and expecting the student to absorb them, and it is possible to go a long way in 'engineering' just applying them. If the choice of model was wrong, or it was incorrectly applied, or circuit topology wasn't good or if everything was fine - that'll get revealed during testing - "if(problem found) address problem; else don't;" and so many little jobs can easily go like that. Cost can be an overwhelming factor and engineers' time is expensive. Obviously, there is a paradox there because a little more time thinking can save a huge cost in the future... but project managers don't often see that and engineers rarely explain it to them well, and it is often arguably better for a corporation to release a product sooner with faults than later with none. Most companies I've worked for were in quite niche scientific applications, where precision 10ns wide 10kV pulse generator, low-noise DC-coupled 6GHz ADC front ends and positron detectors working inside MRI fields were reasonably common requirements - for those, you tend not to find many worked examples and then keeping the design all within silly safety standards certainly requires a bit of lateral thinking. I like to consider myself good at lateral thinking and the value I've assigned to it certainly makes my clients' eyes water... I guess that makes it a valued trait. |
| eti:
Of course it is!! |
| tggzzz:
Individuals aren't sufficient, except in movies. Teams are necessary ,but why? Multiple things need to happen for a project to be successful, and they require radically different skills - and hence personality traits, and hence multiple people. One way of dividing those up is via the Myers Brigg personality factors. Now while it would be unwise to I think of that as The One Truth, if used wisely there is so e validity to the concepts. Myers Brigg invented eight team roles, each with requiredmstrengths and allowable weaknesses, with the concept that a team need them all to be successful. One person has a primary personality and roles, but can adopt a secondary role. I can never remember the official roles, but I find that alternative team roles are easier to understand and remember. They are: * chairman * ideas man * critic * worker * finisher * communicator * action man One example of an unbalanced team is two ideas men: they would have great fun but nothing would be achieved. Another, of two critics, would result in nothing novel being achieved. The OP's thinking outside the box is the ideas man role. Beneficial in some circumstances, but not sufficient. |
| Wallace Gasiewicz:
As a comment about "Good Enough" Definition of "Quality" in manufacturing is that the product meets the customers' "Specification" or expectation. |
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