how is mathematics used in an electrical engineering career?

Answer 1

Well, in school you will never go a day without doing some math. But as you get into a career the time you spend one-on-one with your calculator decreases. First, when you are employeed as an engineer, you will (most likely) be doing work in a very narrow subset of engineering. Say you are working on RF transmitters, your need to remember power distrubiton stuff falls off pretty quick. But you will get very good at building transmitters. So good, that you'll not need to caculate the everything to the tiniest detail. You even might get to a point where you don't have to spend any time on the math, unless you are dealing with a quirky problem of sorts.

Bear in mind that a majority of engineering graduates are somewhat dissapointed at finding out the realities of the working world. Everyone imagines what there dream job is going to be like, but usually your beginning career is not as cool, or sometimes challenging, as hoped. I still think it is one of the best fields available, just don't expect your whole day to be filled with the 'fun' stuff.

While math is important, you HAVE to know what that math was telling you. If someone asks you about a circuit design and why it isn't working, you need to be able to point to something and say 'because this is causing this'. If you don't understand what is going on, all the math in the world is not going to save you.

I spent, and still spend, a great deal of time fixing and correcting designs and systems that 'looked good' from the math/theory side. Mathematics was definetely not my strong suit, and there are many things i would rather do then a partial diferential equation, but i'm the guy the math nerd comes to in a panick because his stuff doesn't work.

Answer 2

As an electrical engineering practitioner myself, mathematics is really an integral part of my profession. From simple arithmetic, to algebra, to geometry, to calculus, to complex matrices and numerical analysis..these are really vital to solve the simple to complex problems in engineering. Electrical engineering is mathematics, electricity and technology combined so better get ready for those mind-boggling, never before encountered application of mathematics.. but it's fun when you're already knew it..

Answer 3

There are many calculations involved in the study of electrical engineering (or ANY kind of engineering ofr that matter). Mostly its algebra and geometry, but you have to love maths to do engineering (just look at some of the questions asked under this engineering section of Yahoo Answers)

Answer 4

Electrical engineering is the most mathematically oriented engineering field. If you include computer design, the math extends to modern algebra (error-correcting codes), complex numbers, differential equations, transforms, vector calculus and more.

Answer 5

Well, Linear Algebra, Matrices and Calculus are the major parts of mathematics that you'll be using.