Triple integration

Picture shows #VJTI college which was established in 1887 to provide engineers for Mumbai's textile industry.It is one of the oldest engineering college in India

After three years of working at Mahindra me and four others were selected for a company sponsored masters program at VJTI Mumbai.We were all very excited to get a break from our corporate life, go back to the class room and have a college life.First couple of weeks were spend finding accommodation,adjusting to fast pace of life,heavy rains and learning to commute safely in Mumbai's local trains.Once we settled in we started with our first class on machine dynamics and vibration taught to us by Professor Sawlekar(Ours was the last batch he taught, he is no more).

On the black board our professor started deriving an equation for a dynamics problem.Finally the problem was formulated and we arrived at an equation with triple integration.Our professor asked us to solve equation with triple integration.We all sponsored students had a gap of more than three years from college.Forget about solving triple integration we had forgotten how to solve simple single integration problem!!!We understood it would be very difficult for us to pass the subject.After the class few of the student approached the professor and told him that it was very difficult to recollect how to solve such complex equations.

Our concern was if we were not able to solve such difficult equations we won't be able to pass the exam.

Our professor assured us that we need not worry about exams and everyone will pass with good grades.He told us that for an engineer it is very important to learn to formulate a problem correctly.An engineer should be able to derive an equation correctly from first principles and solving it was secondary or a trivial task.He told us that his assumption was that his students have reached up to masters level that in itself was proof that they knew how to solve equations.Also engineering is approximate science and there is nothing called as an exact solution.By making assumptions and approximation an engineer tries to reach closer to an exact solution.

He told us that in the examination if we were able to understand the problem correctly and able to formulate the problem then it would be good enough.So if we could derive the equation then he would award us full marks even if we made a calculation error while solving the problem.We all felt relaxed and went on to pass the subject with good grades. After working for more than a decade in the industry what I have realised is lot of the time is wasted because not enough thought is put upfront to frame the problem correctly. 80% of the effort should be put to formulate problem correctly and 20% time is needed to solve the problem.If the problem definition is wrong then even if we get an accurate answer it will be of no use.We call it GIGO(garbage in garbage out).Today we have very good tools and high computing power.But all this are just tools,but the ability to think and formulate a problem correctly is more important and that is what separates a good engineer from a bad engineer.