It's easy to manipulate facts to make a biased argument.

Remember that.

 

Perhaps the fundamental question that underlies this thread is whether any engineering disasters can be traced to some professors opting to give partial credit in undergraduate courses. Personally, I would tend to doubt it, but does any hard data even exist to answer this question? Probably not.

Typically, a student will encounter many different teaching styles and many different grading styles in the many years that they study engineering. Then they will work with other more experienced engineers in industry. In the end, any good engineer understands the importance of accuracy and establishment of methods and systems to minimize the chances of mistakes. He also understands that mistakes will happen no matter what. All we can do is try to minimize the mistakes and hope that the mistakes that exist are not critical and life threatening, or if they are, we hope they are discovered before a disaster occurs.

I can say that I've lost more than one night of sleep worrying about system designs I've been involved with that will kill people if a failure does occur. Engineers can't leave their work at work, but must carry it with them at all times, inside their brains. Often the alarm bells will go off in the middle of the night while sleeping. Other times, while in the shower, or eating dinner. Unfortunately, there is no fool-proof way to eliminate errors, and the subconscious mind is the last sentinel, after all other gates have been passed.