I want to see the essential equations. Whether it's for your hobby project or for a professional design, it makes sense to understand the basic maths so one can follow the design steps.
I made the poll because I had the feeling that not much people like to see equations. In my posts I usually try to explain the whole engineering process, that is, explain the reasons behind each decision and the math/equations used in the proces. I had the feeling that readers enjoy more just results, than the engineering peocess itself.
Posts, even it is just a poll, on a broader range of topics like this, can provide benefits to individuals in technical careers. To develop one's career requires knowledge. The knowledge can lead to understanding. The understanding could improve decision making capabilities. Without knowing that you don't know, you limit the possibility of making a different decision.
Using equations in writing effectively, requires the writer to be more knowledgeable in writing. That increases the workload. I find few technical people that embrace the writing part of a technical career. I'm not talking about the technical writers, those are a unique breed on their own.
Compositions that contain equations, can fall short of the reader walking away with the best experience when the writer lacks writing skills. The writing knowledge is not just about the format of the equation, what I narrowly call presentation. There I wrote the equation out correctly therefore I can use it.
To use the equation the writer is assuming the reader has the knowledge. I assume because the reader is reading an electronics paper, he/she has the knowledge of ohms law. As mention early in this post. Equations without an explanation are not ideal. Without the explanation the reader is left with determining how the equation fits. Couple that with no knowing about the equation puts the reader in a tougher spot. Equations do take up space. Using them to replace blank as a content separator makes the paper look fuller.
The more I think about this, the more I could write about it. Writing itself is hard work. To master the writing craft and then apply it to a subject matter is doubly hard. If you plan on using equations in professional material. I recommend you do a little bit of reading on the mechanics of using equations in writing and not just assume presenting the equation in the correct font type and size and formatted correctly is going to benefit the paper. Also more of the bad application of equations doesn't improve the paper.
My apologies for pouring so much ink onto the paper. Great poll neuromodulator , exploring this subtopic through dialog is one way technical people can know what they don't know. How they choose to use it, is up to them.
Yeah, I can do equations now as well. Fancy that feature being there all this time.
E=mC2
I'll have to find my second most favourite equation now. It's something to do with triple integrals of surface I think. I think it had an upside down triangle symbol in it. I really only remember the feeling of amazement that after a our hour lecture on some mathematics thing, we ended up with this tiny compact equation that represented everything we had done throughout the hour. I wish I had made a note of it.
I do like a good equation, one of my favourites is
E = mC^2 (not sure how to do powers in a blog)
which is a truly astonishing equation to arrive at. I also like a good academic paper. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the maths in papers is there as a barrier, I find the maths useful in a paper as it removes the ambiguity of the English language (or probably any spoken language) and enables an abstract description. I have a book on artificial neural networks which I have used for various ANN controlled projects, but there is one step missing from the mathematics in the back-propagation learning algorithm/mathematics which so far I have not been able to bridge. I can use the software and I know how the maths works, but I just need that final step to achieve a full understanding. One day I'll put the time in to doing this - it was (still is) one of my goals when I retired.
I like seeing the math to prove a concept or point, especially the engineering units used, thats how we learn ( or remember )
I dont need to see every small obvious detail tho or pages of derivations using 3 dimensional differential vectors.
Its probably a good practice to put clarifications and some calculations into a section after the descriptions and refer to it for those wanting to see those details.
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