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phil
@phil
One of the most important skills I learned from my engineering education was number sense. It’s an intuition about what answers are reasonable. Not enough for precise work, but a useful barometer for gauging if you’re on the right track. These back-of-the-napkin style problems turn out to be very useful in life.
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phil
@phil
Here is an interesting paper in Science that does these kind of rough calculations for some interesting questions: https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~burrows/classes/542/papers/Patryk.1975_Weisskopf.pdf
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Ryan
@byldr.eth
Same. One of the most valuable skills I picked up from my Physics education that still comes in handy regularly.
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Dennis🎩
@mydennis
thanks for sharing it phil! also what i like as a engineer is having the desire to get up and go is crucial, showing enthusiasm is a great skill that will help accelerate the project and work.
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abram
@abram
This was one of the biggest takeaways for me reading Skunk Works. Kelly Johnson had an innate number sense. Allowed them to ship much faster. Big part of why they were able to build the first US jet fighter prototype in 140 days.
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Nick
@nickporter
never knew the term for this, have always been good at approximate mental matt like whats 18% of 272? no clue but my gut tells me about 49. by no means rainman math but i don’t need to think about it it’s just what comes to mind the subconscious is smarter than the conscious mind if we know how to listen to it
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