Hello there, not sure if this is in the right category so moderators feel free to move this where it belongs.

I'm a pilot by profession, and it does get old. I have a good grasp on science and aerodynamics with (greatly) simplified classical mechanics, where we only got into the absolute basics of calculus. I was a 2nd rate computer geek in middle school but picked up BASIC programming without too much trouble. Not enough to impress the girls, but certainly enough to overwrite the copy protection on the calorie-counter exercise tapes you could rent from the library in 1985, and messing up the program to insensitively rebuke the lazy exercisers. Yes I got in trouble. Seems I have a general aptitude for science and computers anyway. What I don't have is math beyond college level algebra, and now my wife is heckling me because "you think you're going to design and build a home weather robot like the one we already have, but yours is going to be better?" Really I think she's just terrified of me spending weekends and my home time in my basement and only surfacing for dinner, but that's a problem no wannabe engineer or even accomplished engineer can solve afaik.

I hear that a person can kinda sorta get by if they are really good at algebra. Is this true? We're talking EE here, not civil engineering. My little weather ninja needs to rely on optical sensors, infrared emitters, transducers, RF modules, and enough coding to make the display work. Seems like I could find a few Lectronics fer Dummies texts out there and just buy all the components pre-manufactured, leaving me to figure out how to tie them all together, but that wouldn't be fun. Nor cheap. An FCC certified RF module costs $20,000??? Gonna have to build it myself then. Trouble is...without the calculus and differential equations, am I up chit creek without a paddle? If I really really really have to, I'll start learning calculus. But I really don't WANNA (stamps foot).

Let the hazing begin. All advice welcome. And I promise I won't really do any rogue s**t like set the neighbor's awful Golden Euonymus shrubs on fire with a phased array microwave antenna.

 

If you can write the equations this may be able to solve them for you.

 

Yes you can, especially digital ones. Analog, maybe not so much.

 

Thanks. I have heard that about analog... is it because of noise propagation and filtering? For what I'm trying to do, it seems mine is a mixed signal case. My wx robot is still going to need ADCs to convert stuff like wind velocity and light reflectivity to a digital value... maybe that's the part I can use off-the-shelf, programmable ADCs to implement?

 

Just take it as it comes. Start a project. You have the entire knowledge of the world at your finger tips.

 

Mathematics is the language of physics and most fields of engineering, including electronics and computers.
If you want to excel in any of these fields, getting a solid foundation in mathematics will certainly give you an advantage.

Don't let it scare you. Start off with the basics.

Learn algebra and then move on to trigonometry. Next step is linear equations and graphs, follow by quadratics and exponentials.
Later to come will be calculus, differentiation and integration.

 

If you need a review ... you can see if this satisfies your need.

 

Thanks. I have heard that about analog... is it because of noise propagation and filtering?

Not specifically. All electronic devices are governed by physical processes that are described primarily by differential equations.

Humans, being inherently lazy, have spent an enormous amount of time and effort (the contradiction that pretty well defines an engineer's life -- put in huge amounts of effort in the never-ending quest to make life easier) developing techniques to avoid dealing with those differential equations as much as possible.

In analog electronics, we've developed powerful techniques based on Laplace and Fourier transforms that let us turn differential equations into algebraic ones.

In digital electronics, we've developed powerful techniques that let us effectively turn them into Boolean algebraic ones.

The result is that you can stand on the shoulders of the giants that did this work before you and design and build a broad spectrum of useful things without straying beyond what these algebraic tools allow you to do. But it also means that you will have a very hard time getting very far in the much larger world of things for which these tools are not adequate and that require you to be able to work at a more fundamental level.

So the real question is whether you will be happy living within the limitations that your algebra-only math level will afford you. Only you can answer that and you won't really have the information you need to do so until you start running up against the boundaries of what you want to do and what your math skills will allow you to do.

 

Thanks.

...the contradiction that pretty well defines an engineer's life -- put in huge amounts of effort in the never-ending quest to make life easier...

I like this.

So the real question is whether you will be happy living within the limitations that your algebra-only math level will afford you.

In your opinion, is a full feature weather station unreasonable to build with only algebra? What I foresee happening is that even if I get away with it, I'll be hooked and want to build something even bigger and badder next (like figure out a way for FAA weather bots to differentiate types of frozen precipitation... which they cannot yet do). This is gonna require the higher math. I hope I can study basic circuit design concurrently along with some calculus and diffEQ, rather than burn out on a year of math first. I consider the analogy of a caving expedition. The smarter guy in front of me took the time necessary to acquire a really bright flashlight (math), which will allow him to negotiate the tunnels, ledges, and darkness with greater ease. Then there's me, with a much, much dimmer light, yet I scale the ledge anyway and hope to make it out the other side. If I'm lucky, maybe I find a battery or two and increase the lumens just enough to make it.

 

For analog design I suggest you learn to use a Spice simulator such as the free LTspice from Linear Technology/Analog Devices. It has a somewhat steep learning curve, but they have a good tutorial and many example circuits to help you get started.

It will allow you to test your circuit design and spot a lot of mistakes before you build the real circuit.
It also allows you to look at the voltages, currents, and power dissipation anywhere in the circuit to help understand its operation, which can be done only to a limited extent with the actual circuit.

 

is a full feature weather station unreasonable to build with only algebra?

If you can fill out a weight and balance form, you have enough mathematical sophistication to build a home weather station from off-the-shelf components. Assuming that you won't be designing stuff so much as integrating already designed sub-systems, I wouldn't worry about the math. More importantly, you'll need basic electronics knowledge and programming skills. Fortunately, the basics are easy to learn and there are countless online tutorials for every aspect.

Start small with an Arduino and a temperature sensor and jump right in. You'll have a blast. And eventually, as your hobby gets more serious and your skills more advanced, you can start filling in the math holes. I think you'll find that learning math as an adult is a lot more interesting than when you were in school.

 

In your opinion, is a full feature weather station unreasonable to build with only algebra?

The devil is in the details. If you are going to be buying off-the-shelf components, then you probably don't need much higher math to design the system. Now, analyzing the resulting data may end up involving extremely sophisticated math or hardly any math at all -- the devil is in the details there, too.

If you eventually want to design some of the components to do things that nothing out there does today, then it is very possible that you are going to get caught up in some mathematical details well beyond basic algebra. Perhaps. You guessed it... it depends on the details.

 

If you can fill out a weight and balance form...

I don't even have to do that anymore. My dispatchers do it for me. All I have to do is glance at my flight plan for obvious out-of-range errors, then I key it into triple redundancy flight management computers that you guys designed. If there's an error, my FMS will sass me and I either apply a correction on the spot, or go back and yell at my dispatcher.

I like your perspective on learning math... back in the day we didn't have animations or videos, just texts and we had to learn it. Now I have a choice, and all kinds of help. I'd actually be excited about learning calc.

 

Ok, here is a starter test.

Without cheating and looking up for formulas or answers anywhere,

1) convert 20°C to °F.

2) convert 104°F to °C.

Show your work. Calculators not allowed.

 

Come on, seriously? That's 5th grade arithmetic. I know the formula still. C= 5/9(F-32), F=9/5C+32. You'll have to trust me I can do this. You didn't even ask me to convert to Rankine or Kelvin.

Here's a question: How would you write the formula C=5/9(F-32) as a BINARY equation? No, I can't do this. I can convert small numbers from decimal to binary and vice versa, assuming no signed numbers, 2s complements, and overflows, but I'm curious as to what the equation looks like.

 

Here's a question: How would you write the formula C=5/9(F-32) as a BINARY equation? No, I can't do this. I can convert small numbers from decimal to binary and vice versa, assuming no signed numbers, 2s complements, and overflows, but I'm curious as to what the equation looks like.

At their lowest level, computers are dumb; they don't actually work with equations, they only work with simple instructions. In other words, we have to tell them what to do. That the instructions are encoded as binary numbers is really just a convenience for the hardware designers (because 1 and 0 are conveniently represented as high and low relative voltages).

In CPU terms, that equation would be represented by a sequence of instructions: load the value of F, sum it with -32, and multiply the result by 0.55556, storing it at the memory address associated with C. Exactly how this would look at the machine level depends on the processor type. But if you do it in a high-level programming language (like C), then it will look almost exactly as you wrote it.

 

Come on, seriously? That's 5th grade arithmetic. I know the formula still. C= 5/9(F-32), F=9/5C+32. You'll have to trust me I can do this. You didn't even ask me to convert to Rankine or Kelvin.

Here's a question: How would you write the formula C=5/9(F-32) as a BINARY equation? No, I can't do this. I can convert small numbers from decimal to binary and vice versa, assuming no signed numbers, 2s complements, and overflows, but I'm curious as to what the equation looks like.

C = 101 / 1001 * (F - 100000)

Now, if this is source code for a program, you would need to indicate that these numeric literals are expressed in binary and how you do that depends on the language, assuming the language supports that representation. In Java, for instance, it would be

C = 0b101 / 0B1001 * (F - 0b100000);

One problem that you would have is that in most programming languages the value stored in C would always be zero regardless of what F was. Can you figure out why?

 

Come on, seriously? That's 5th grade arithmetic. I know the formula still. C= 5/9(F-32), F=9/5C+32. You'll have to trust me I can do this. You didn't even ask me to convert to Rankine or Kelvin.

Here's a question: How would you write the formula C=5/9(F-32) as a BINARY equation? No, I can't do this. I can convert small numbers from decimal to binary and vice versa, assuming no signed numbers, 2s complements, and overflows, but I'm curious as to what the equation looks like.

You did claim that you have limited knowledge of mathematics. Well we don't know how limited. This is just a test to see how far you can go.

So let us try to go a bit further.

Given you have the formulas:

C = 5/9 x (F-32)
F = C * 9/5 + 32

How would you convert from C to F, and F to C, to one decimal place, if you are allowed to use integer arithmetic only?

 

C = 101 / 1001 * (F - 100000)

Now, if this is source code for a program, you would need to indicate that these numeric literals are expressed in binary and how you do that depends on the language, assuming the language supports that representation. In Java, for instance, it would be

C = 0b101 / 0B1001 * (F - 0b100000);

One problem that you would have is that in most programming languages the value stored in C would always be zero regardless of what F was. Can you figure out why?

Can I have a hint? Let's say we want to convert to hexadecimal instead. Will we still get a value of zero for C? The syntax makes sense, in COBOL it would be similar, (C = X#5 / X#9 * (F - X#20).

 

You did claim that you have limited knowledge of mathematics. Well we don't know how limited. This is just a test to see how far you can go.

Oh boy, a test! What's next? Order of operations? In my original post, which I admit was a rant of my life, I said I had through college level algebra. But, I could sure do with a review, since it was a long long time ago. I appreciate your help though.