Just How Smarter Engineers Are Than Everyone Else 12

[jmw]

The ME 262 (in my mind becaue it came up on the spitfire thread) started life with a tail wheel then migrated to a nose wheel design, despite being a jet with no propellers to damage.
I think, somewhere in the States, someone is making these planes (with modern durable engines)....
Ah yes STormbirds and you can have a flight in one.... some great videos there too.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

Oh, the price for a flying version is $2.5M USD!


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[FeX32]

hmm. very subjective. I do agree that most engineers I know are much more intelligent than most non-technical people I know. But like everything there are exceptions.

Also, I personally am "higher educated" than most engineers. I have observed some of my colleagues that seemingly some days are plainly "dull". Others that are absolutely brilliant. They all have doctorates.

Like I said it is subjective with exceptions just like anything else in life. But, in general agreeable.




Fe (IronX32)

 

[FeX32]

Spock like logic

Made my day. . Soo true.


Fe (IronX32)

 

[LiteYear]

An interesting result I noticed from the graph is the declining trend in verbal skills from Math/CD to Physical Science to Engineering. It may well be that the trend is within the noise margin of the data, but if not, it makes for a compelling criticism of Engineer's ability to communicate! Of those three disciplines, I'd argue that the ability to speak effectively is most important in Engineering. The graph suggests instead something that anecdotally I'm aware of - Mathematicians, while often shy, tend to be surprisingly engaging and entertaining. Engineers on the other hand, are often harsh, critical and are not fond of communicating with non-engineers.

I wonder if it has something to do with the Mathematical propensity for imagination and whimsy? Mathematicians in my experience tend to be more willing to converse playfully, while Engineers often concern themselves only with the truth.

Disclaimer: BMath, BEng(Elec)

By the way, I think the conclusion as in the thread subject is a big stretch from the data. All it really shows is that people in mathematical professions perform better in mathematical tests. The graph then lets that result dominate and look, wow - Engineers are smart! If you take the maths results out the graph starts to look a lot different. But it would probably take a STEM person to see that

 

[SNORGY]

What is a STEM person?

I know of STEM cell research...

 

[FeX32]

Haha. LitYear is logically correct.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)


Fe (IronX32)

 

[cranky108]

(Someone shoot me for saying this).
If you are an engineer that knows it all, exactly how much communication skills do you really need?

 

[SNORGY]

So, is that a Meyers-Briggs profile (sp?)?

 

[JohnRBaker]

If you are an engineer that knows it all, exactly how much communication skills do you really need?

Ever come-up with a really GOOD idea which was ignored by you management because the guy with the second-best idea had better communication skills than you did?

During my senior year of Engineering school, 40+ years ago, our university added to the curriculum a class in 'Report Preparation and Presentation'. They felt it was so critical that they deemed it mandatory for all students to take it and despite it being offered as ostensibly a 2nd year class, they required all Junior and Senior level (even if you were only one term away from graduation) to take the class.

The class consisted not only of how to prepare and use the standard presentation media of the day, such overhead slides, posterboards, flipcharts as well as graphic art matetials and such, we had to give stand-up presentations which were video-taped and were then reviewed and critiqued not only by the instructor but also by our peers. This was the first year it was required (1970/1971) and has been a standard part of the courseware since including being added as a part of many of the engineering classes themselves. I've had the opportunity on several occasions to return to my Alma Mater when I've been invited to judge students in those classes which includes a 'design contest' as part of their final grade. I've done this for both Freshman level engineering 'survey' type classes as well as Senior lever Design Enigineering classes. I have to say that the current graduating students have at least a much better level of comfort and skills with using modern media tools, however the personal skills of actually standing up and defending your designs, which was virtually all we judges saw of what the student teams had done since we ONLY saw what they presented and how they answered the questions we put to them and a major portion of their scores was based on both the quaility of the presentation material as well as the execution and their ability to respond when asked to defend or explain in more detail exactly what they had done.

In conclusion, while the tools have improved in presenting your ideas, you still need to be articulate, cool under pressure, confident in what you're saying and above all, give the impression that you are in full control of the 'project' that you were given to accomplish and even if you succeeded 100% if you are unable to convince the 'guys with the checkbook' you effort will be of little value to either you personally or to the organization for whom you work.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cranky108]

Yes some communications skills are needed, as well as some marketing. However a good talker, with a bad idea will usually get promoted, I mean found out as a poor engineer, in short order.

I have known some very good engineers who were very well respected, and rarely had to give much of a sales speech.

I have known some engineers who were very good talkers, but could not think there way out of a paper bag.

And I have known some who were book smart, but had problems with the real world.

But who does better in an IQ test? The talker, the thinker, or the applications?

 

[SNORGY]

Thinkers will do better in IQ tests, by and large.

I had an interesting conversation just before Christmas with a colleague of mine who (unlike dummy B.Sc. me) holds a PhD in chemical engineering. He felt - and I completely agree - that insofar as knowledge is concerned, the brain really only understands patterns, and the key differences in intelligence are in the number of patterns recognized, the speed at which they are recognized, their complexity, and the ability to integrate recognized patterns into extrapolative thought processes towards decision-making.

People who do well on Jeopardy! are good at the first two, whereas people with true intellect are good at the latter two.

People with "high IQs" are optimally balanced between the four, with more emphasis on the latter two.

Some slow thinkers might never be able to pass an IQ test (if time was a factor) but might nevertheless otherwise be brilliant people.

While we believe that we are vastly superior to animals insofar as brain function is concerned, that is not necessarily true, in my opinion. Animals recognize many simple patterns much faster than we do (their survival depends on it); and the "more intelligent" animals can recognize complex patterns fairly quickly. This is why one often hears the term "pattern training" for dolphins, elephants and dogs.

In short, humans are really nothing more than highly pattern-trained animals.

 

[FeX32]

Great post SNORGY. I agree much with the first part.

I don't think of myself as an animal. That part is subjective to perspective, there is a line between animal and intelligent being. The scientific part related to pattern recognition is spot on, this is nonetheless coupled with memory, creative thinking and the like.


Fe (IronX32)

 

[FeX32]

the ability to integrate recognized patterns into extrapolative thought processes towards decision-making.

There is a better word for this. We do it all the time and every day. Just on different levels.


Fe (IronX32)

 

[SNORGY]

I guess it depends on one's bias to some extent. The conversation between me and my colleague eventually ended up in some debate as to whether or not the fourth phenomenon (let's call it creative thinking) was more than just pattern recognition and assimilation, or was it really just a more complex variation that related "patterns" to perceived "cause versus effect" or "problem therefore solution" information which, in turn, were derived from recognition of other patterns. In a sense, it is akin to some of the philosophical ideas presented by David Hume on the topics of causality and knowledge arrived at from induction from past experience. In my view, back in the days of academic pursuit, my take on that had been that causality was defined rather than established, and that all that human thinkers were doing in relating cause to effect was defining patterns that fit observations.

I suppose with that last statement that perhaps true intelligence, beyond pattern training, resides within the ability to formulate hypotheses that are not directly supported by analysis of any known pre-existing patterns. In other words, perhaps it is in the ability to come up with ideas that nobody else has ever even thought about and, indeed, cannot be correlated with any pre-existing thought process whatsoever. By that measure, when I think about who then might be the most intelligent beings in the world, I am likely to experience nightmares of monumental proportions.

 

[FeX32]

"By that measure, when I think about who then might be the most intelligent beings in the world, I am likely to experience nightmares of monumental proportions."
That made me laugh. I assume your nightmares are caused by the "new" ideas of heavy drug users or something. haha.
What you describe in the last paragraph is essentially research in some peoples minds. It is difficult to come up with very new ideas of course. But there always must be some correlation to previous thought, no matter how small it may be. For example, we always must define a problem to be solved first, we then retain all knowledge previously thought about that problem (if exists), then new ideas that relate to the problem are proposed. These new ideas are based upon what you ask? That is a very good speculative question actually.


Fe (IronX32)

 

[SNORGY]

The subjects of those nightmares Might Be Anonymous.

 

[FeX32]

MBA hatter to the core. Hahaha. We were having an intelligent discussion for a few posts .
But there is not too much we can add to that though.
Really only that many new ideas are not entirely or randomly "new" as the creator must have culminated parts of portions of memory or the like. Or randomly selected things and it just happend to work. But is the latter intelligence? hmm.


Fe (IronX32)

 

[SNORGY]

I saw a documentary on National Geographic Channel, a portion of which showed how chimpanzees used a touch screen to duplicate patterns that had flashed before them for a second or so, and they were able to do this faster and more accurately than people. They could certainly recognize patterns, but I assume that they would not be able to "create" patterns for an intended purpose, in a manner of speaking. They are simply offering a behaviour in response to recognizing a pattern. (For which a food reward followed.)

Animal intelligence defined from that perspective alone, however, does not explain how some animals teach themselves (or automatically know how) to make and use tools. Ultimately, perhaps there is a line between pattern recognition and the next step, the synthesis of patterns into ideas.

I haven't taken a lot of IQ tests, but the ones that I have taken all largely revolve around being able to recognize a pattern (which number comes next, which shape is the next most logical, etc.). In a way, perhaps IQ tests do not test one's ability to "think" so much as to merely "recognize". Perhaps true genius is defined by a combination of creativity and a non-methodical / non-analytical vision of what form the end product of some abstract consciousness or recognition might take. That would make artists more intelligent than engineers, and yet, a lot of brilliant artists, if confronted with a series of numbers like 1, 3, 4, 7, 11 would struggle in the determination that 18 is the next number.

Maybe the problem is in the "definition" of what "defines intelligence". It appears that decision has already been made and, consequently, is biased from the outset. Even if the test is a test of how well one "thinks", there are distinct boundaries around those things that are to be thought about during the test.

That is probably what other posters above have hit on more precisely than I.

 

[FeX32]

Interesting perspective. I thought we assumed engineers should be good with both pattern recognition as well as creativity. We could go on and classify people as has been done in the study roughly, but it is subjective as you imply.
To me it doesn't make logical sense that a person who can recognize a simple pattern but can pain in watercolour very well is considered intelligent. Should not an artist that is innovative be able to do both?
It is true though in society that those good at science and math are deemed more intelligent than those that can write, draw etc. It is a byproduct of the general persons speculative view of things. If person "A" can build a robot, but his neighbour can sing a song and play piano, does that make person "A" more intelligent? Does it take more skill and intelligence to build a robot than to sing a song? To some the answer is obvious, to others it is relative. Just like to all of us we appear on this earth as if it were still, despite the fact that we are whisking our way through space.

One way to possibly destroy this bias is to simply rank based upon everything. Thus, only those talented in all things will be seen as intelligent. ie. the likes of those individuals like Da Vinci. We then have another obvious problem.

The other fact of the matter is that even if one can come to a good conclusion for a definition there will always be those on the other side that will have a bias view. That is the way of the world, bias is everywhere subjective to everything, all the time.

I could say much more...but ..



Fe (IronX32)