– you have taught your 8-year-old child to do a b/c (benefit/cost) calculation before deciding on whether to purchase a video game (and the kid has never bought one because of this).
You Might Be an Engineer If…
August 22, 2012
Wednesday - You Might Be an Engineer If... engineer, you might be an engineer if Leave a comment
3
August 21, 2012
Tuesday - Numbers engineer, number Leave a comment
3 is a number of simplicity and engineers use it to count the number of essential questions to ask when deciding to purchase an item. Here they are:
1. How much does it cost?
2. How long will it last?
3. Will it cause me to socialize with people?
The answer to 1. should be very little.
The answer to 2. should be very long.
The answer to 3. should be, “No.”
There is an expanded list we may cover in later posts, but these three pretty much sum it up. The implications are simple. The answers should be straight forward. No whimpy, “Will I feel better with this item?” If it is needed (which is really the first deal-breaker of a question) then the engineer will work through these three questions.
What could be easier?
b/c
August 20, 2012
Monday - Equations, Charts, Graphs... b/c ratio, benefit, cost, engineer Leave a comment
A calculation near and dear to any engineer is b/c.
b/c is not short for because to an engineer. It represents the ultimate in engineering decision-making. The “b” represents the benefit an item or service has to the person buying it, and the “c” represents the cost. b/c is the benefit compared to the cost or, as engineers like to say, the benefit-cost ratio. The word “ratio” just adds an engineer-ish feel to it.
Engineers use the b/c ratio to determine if it makes sense to build a large factory, or set up a distribution center, or construct a highway, or dam up a river.
An engineer will also use the b/c ratio in his own life, to determine if it is wise to buy a certain car, or house, or make any other large purchase.
But, what an engineer will do even beyond this is to calculate b/c ratios for pretty much any area of life. Should one buy this pen? Calculate the b/c ratio. Should one get the air conditioner fixed in the car? Calculate the b/c ratio. Should one get married. Sure, why not calculate the b/c ratio.
b/c ratios are powerful tools and in the right hands, the hands of an engineer, they become the essence to an efficient existence.
What Event You Should Do
August 10, 2012
Friday - Random Data Packets (Pot Luck) engineer, Olympics Leave a comment
A few members of our family were answering the question: If you could compete in any Olympic sporting event, what would it be? My first response was, of course, the premier event – the triple jump. Setting that aside, I got thinking that, as an engineer, I could figure out what event in which to compete. Here is my reasoning.
The goal is to win a gold medal. And even though the gold medals in these Olympics are only 1.34% gold, there is something to be said for the honor and prestige of winning, I guess.
My thought is that I would want to compete in an event that has the smallest difference between the third and first place finisher. I could make this the sixth and first, or the tenth and first. But I will stay with the third place to the first place, just to demonstrate my engineering solution. The reason to choose this approach is that I would like the best chance to move up to first place, thinking that I will not start in first. So, as we consider just track and field events (the original Olympics), and look at some of the times and distances for various competitions that were completed in this year’s Olympics, we can see which event it would be easiest to move up by calculating the percent of time or distance that the third place was compared to the first place. Of course, for distance events, one wants higher numbers, for time, lower. Therefore, the percent of the lower place score will be below 100% in distance events and above 100% in time, so we will compare the difference from 100%.
Here are the results (all time in seconds, distances in meters):
| Event | 1st | 3rd | % Diff | % 3rd off 1st |
| 100 m | 9.63 | 9.79 | 101.66% | 1.66% |
| 200 m | 19.32 | 19.84 | 102.69% | 2.69% |
| 400 m | 43.94 | 44.52 | 101.32% | 1.32% |
| 800 m | 100.91 | 102.53 | 101.61% | 1.61% |
| 1500 m | 214.08 | 215.13 | 100.49% | 0.49% |
| 10000 m | 1650.42 | 1651.43 | 100.06% | 0.06% |
| 110 m Hurdles | 12.92 | 13.12 | 101.55% | 1.55% |
| 400 m Hurdles | 47.63 | 48.1 | 100.99% | 0.99% |
| Shot Put | 21.89 | 21.23 | 96.98% | 3.02% |
| Discus | 68.27 | 68.03 | 99.65% | 0.35% |
| Long Jump | 8.31 | 8.12 | 97.71% | 2.29% |
| Triple Jump | 17.81 | 17.48 | 98.15% | 1.85% |
I will now start training for the 10000 meter run. I will forget about the Shot Put.
Run the numbers. It’s the only sensible way to decide.
You Might Be an Engineer If…
August 8, 2012
Wednesday - You Might Be an Engineer If... engineer, Olympics Leave a comment
– you have ever thought that the design and construction engineers of all the Olympic buildings should be getting medals way more than the athletes, and have designed the look of the medal for those events.
156
August 7, 2012
Tuesday - Numbers basketball, engineer, number, Olympics Leave a comment
We are continuing our look at the Olympics here at engineeringdaze.com. 156 is not a number near and dear to engineers, but it is a number that came up in the Olympics recently and one that reminds me how engineers can have fun with the Olympics, and indeed, improve various sports.
Today’s sport to improve is basketball. The USA team scored 156 points against a quite inferior opponent in a recent game. This is in a basketball game where there are 8 less minutes than in an NBA game. The Olympic games are split up into four 10-minute quarters. After the first quarter the American team had 49 points. At that pace they could have scored 196 points, so scoring “only”156 was a sign they eased up in the last three quarters.
Scoring 156 points means the team averaged 39 points a quarter, and 3.9 points every minute. And that is with the other team also possessing the ball and scoring 73 points of their own.
This brings me to an idea I have had for a while about basketball and how the broadcast networks can make the game more intriguing to engineers. We are all about numbers – rates, ratios, interpolation and extrapolation. I propose that every 15 or 20 seconds throughout a game, an alternate scoreboard is kept that will extrapolate out what the score will be if the rate at which the teams are scoring is maintained. At the end of the first quarter of the game mentioned above, the score was 49-25. That translates into a final extrapolated score of 196-100.
People would greatly enjoy not only watching the score of the game, but the extrapolated score as it would be updated three or four times every minute. The announcer could say, “Even though there are only 3 minutes and 20 seconds gone in the game, at this rate the (team ahead) will be scoring 136 points! What a rate!”
Didn’t I say engineers could make this game more fun.
d = (1/2) * 2πr
August 6, 2012
Monday - Equations, Charts, Graphs... engineer, equation, Olympics Leave a comment
Watching the Olympics over the weekend gave me the wonderful opportunity of not only being a spectator, but, as an engineer, thinking about how to improve the races for the athletes.
I watched parts of the 10,000 meter race for both the women and the men. That distance equates to 6.2 miles, so this is no sprint. The athletes run around the 400-meter track 25 times. That’s a lot of running, and almost made me want to exercise.
So, I am watching these races and the lead runner often has a shadow, the runner in second place, running right off his or her shoulder, for many of the laps. It made me think, which is a good thing for an engineer to do. I wondered how much longer that second-place runner had to run every time around the track. The lead runner is running about a half meter off the inside line of the track and the second-place runner about a half meter outside of that. This means that the second place runner must be running further as he or she runs half the circumference of the curve of the track.
I looked it up. The track dimensions are laid out with a curve of radius 36.500 meters. Therefore, the distance around the curved end of the track is explained by the equation:
d = (1/2) * 2πr
where,
d = the distance along the curve
r = the radius of the circle
It is 1/2 of the full circumference of 2πr because the curve is 1/2 of a circle. Simple enough.
Considering we know the radius, and note that the first runner is 0.5 meters outside of the inside track line, and second runner, in same lane (the lanes being 1.17 meters wide), right off the first runner’s shoulder, is 0.5 meters outside of the first runner, we end up with a table like this:
Line Radius (m) Distance around curve (m)
inside lane line 36.500 114.668
first runner 37.000 116.239
second runner 37.500 117.810
We have found out that the second runner runs 117.810-116.239 = 1.571 meters further as he or she runs just off the first runner’s shoulder, and this happens every time around one curve of the track. For a full lap, this is doubled to 3.142 meters. When I was watching, a second place runner would easily hang out there for up to 10 laps, meaning that runner would run 31.42 meters longer! 10,000 meters is a long race, but the difference between first and second is often under 30 meters. I don’t know if it was over the weekend. I was busy doing calculations. But I was able to run the numbers and, if I had their cell numbers, would have texted the coaches of the second runners and tell them to back off and run right behind or go ahead and run in front of the other runner. Save the distance. It could mean the distance between silver and gold.
The engineer helps improve the Olympics once again.
The Winner
August 3, 2012
Friday - Random Data Packets (Pot Luck) engineer, Olympics Leave a comment
Watching the Olympics brings up a recurring discussion with my family, mainly between my wife, the non-engineer, and me, the engineer. As an engineer, I can appreciate it when things are able to be quantified and measured. Numbers are our game.
(Of course, some of these “measurements” are carried way to far by managers at work places who have no idea how statistics work and wouldn’t know a regression to the mean if it bit them on their… oops, that’s for another post.)
My wife and I will watch a race and the runner or swimmer who wins will beat the second place person by 1 or 2 or 3 hundredths of a second. This may be after racing for many minutes, and my wife, kind-hearted soul she is, would say that they all finished about the same time. “Is there really any difference between the athletes?” She would give them all gold medals.
We now have the ability to measure quite precisely the time span from the start of the race to the end in hundredths or thousandths of a second. It’s not like the old days when someone may have to make a judgment on who crossed the finish line first or touched the wall before anyone else. It is measurable and specific. One person wins, the other does not.
What I figured out, though, is that I am just as “kind-hearted” as my wife, at least as far as an engineer can be. I may be more kind-hearted because I support the system where the true winner, the absolute winner, the winner proven to be the winner, is the one who is declared the winner.
Specific, measurable, precise, and using significant digits that identify accurate results. An engineer can appreciate that.
0.45 vs. 0.233
July 31, 2012
Tuesday - Numbers engineer, Olympics Leave a comment
We continue with an engineer’s look at the Olympics by considering two numbers: 0.45 and 0.233.
These represent two margins of results in two different sports. The first one, 0.45 is the difference in seconds (a fraction of a second) between 1st and 2nd place in a swimming race, specifically, the 4x100m freestyle. It is a measurable phenomenon – time. We have the knowledge and ability to measure differences in two people or teams to far less than 0.45 seconds. This is a very specific number and method of measurement, and a specific quantity of measurement.
On the other hand, 0.233 is the difference in the score between two gymnasts, meaning one will make it to the finals and one will not. This brings up the question: o.233 whats? Points? Points of what? This number is not a discrete measurement of time or distance, but instead, it is a compilation of scores of “opinions” of judges. In the absence of being able to measure specific distances or times or weights or whatever, the engineer will consider the option of using a group of experts to score items and weigh the scores, comparing scores, throwing out outliers, etc. In that respect, the Olympics does that right.
But in a strict comparison between the two sports, the engineers will overwhelmingly choose the one where results are measured on an absolute scale and not left to opinion, even if they are experts. Give us track and field. We will take swimming or cycling, or rowing. But vary off the path of time, distance, or weight and venture into gymnastics or diving, well, the engineer will either fall asleep or stay up all night devising a better, specific measurement of those sports.
Engineering Daze 