@oldpacer thanks for the recommendations I will need to start picking these up one by one.
@flga-2-2 luckily I already do so brushing up on survey specific math shouldn??t be too consuming, I just need to shake off the rust haha
Very nice!
What's funny is, being the frugal student that I was, I attempted to rent this book for the class that required it.?ÿ I waited and waited and waited and the book didn't show up.?ÿ A month and a half later I contacted the rental company and reported the book lost.?ÿ In the meantime a classmate had purchased a .PDF copy of the book and since I owned a laptop at the time he offered to simply let me use his copy.?ÿ I lived in a triplex in an old part of the town where the school was located and I think one of my neighbors was a little bit of a crackhead who occasionally stole mail.?ÿ A couple weeks after I reported the book lost it magically appeared in my mailbox without any sort of package or mailing label on it-- JUST the book.?ÿ I contacted the rental company and told them I found the book but they said forget about it, we've recorded it lost so go ahead and keep it.?ÿ And I've had it ever since.
I still have part of the .PDF copy of the book that I got from my classmate and I always bring that with me and read it on flights.
@cyril-turner - I totally agree with this recommendation.?ÿ I used a very early version of this in early 80s myself and have used to teach other young surveyors about applicable math.?ÿ Even used it for my son to help him understand basic understanding of geometry and trig.
The law of cosines formula is a nice piece of mathematics that is loaded with insight. If you look at it this way: c^2 = a^2 + b^2 - 2ab*cos(C), the bold part is just the Pythagorean theorem. So, when angle C is not a right angle, the last term adjusts the length of side c. If angle C is acute, c is shorter than the hypotenuse would have been, cos(C) is positive, so the side is shortened. If angle C is obtuse, then c is longer than the hypotenuse would have been, cos(C) is negative, and the side is lengthened. And it works if C is a right angle because cos(90) = 0.
I used to do a little circle exercise on the board that really helped students see how closely related all triangles are and how changes could be accounted for with mathematics.
Some of my freehand circles and triangles were so bad that I didn't object to phones coming out and pictures being snapped. Great comic relief and good camaraderie with and among my students.
I was hoping to get folks a little bit riled up with my oversimplification of the math on this fine Thursday afternoon but nobody really took the bait. ????
As far as freehand circles, I distinctly remember 1 professor I had say he used to be able to swing a damn near perfect circle on the chalkboard in his younger years.?ÿ He tried one for us and it really was kind of impressive.?ÿ It looked like he locked his shoulder or elbow a certain way and then swiveled his arm around.?ÿ The closing was kind of messy but just eyeballing it the radius looked surprisingly consistent.?ÿ Maybe if you do too many of those you end up needing tommy john surgery.
Yeah I think I learned more calculus from khan academy than I did from the instructor actually.?ÿ Great site.
- As someone who is in the process for studying for their FS exam, the books that have strengthened my surveying math skills the most have been Solved Surveying Problems for the FS and PS by Vansickle, Fundamentals of Surveying Practice Exam by George Cole and any version of Elementary Surveying. Instead of just going through old math books, I learn/retain information best when I see the practical application which is why I personally feel like these books are a great place to start. Whenever I come across a problem I don??t know I look at the solution in the back to help me solve it as well as watching similar problems on YouTube. Dialing down solid a a solid understanding of triangles, circles and angles would be a great start which can be achieved through the books listed above and a few good surveying YouTube channels( Todd Horton and Scott Peterson have been my 2 personal favorites).
All good suggestions for textbooks, though I prefer Hickerson for highway math.
Try abebooks.com for an older edition
Also if you can find
Land Survey Computations by Ben Buckner
Land Surveyor's Formulas and their Application by John Keen
The Mathematics of Surveying by Ted Madson
all deal with the math of surveying and its application directly.
My wife picked this up at a garage sale about a month ago for a dollar. Lots of survey math in it. Anyone know any of these names that used the book in school? Illinois area maybe.
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It is great that you have an interest in tackling the mathematical side of what we do.?ÿ Depending on exactly what you end up doing in surveying it is good to understand the inner workings of how the magic answers appear on your data collector screen.?ÿ For most boundary surveys the math is incredibly simplistic.?ÿ Software solves most of the more complicated issues.?ÿ That's how somewhat math-ignorant types can get by.?ÿ Accept what the magic box tells you and ask no questions.?ÿ It must be correct..............right?
Your experience with the upper level math?ÿ could help elevate you to assisting with far more complex projects than what most of us work with.?ÿ I remember reading an article in a survey mag many years ago discussing construction layout when solar heating of one side of the metal structure had to be accounted for when locating bolt holes and such.?ÿ The story involved a somewhat circular stadium where bright sunlight brought on movement of key points due to the expansion of the members on that side compared to the shaded members on the other side of the stadium.?ÿ As the day passed the expansion slowly moved from the east side to the south side to the west side.
I second this comment on the NCEES study materials. those books mentioned in your comment helped expose me to plenty of survey related scenarios where various math concepts were covered. It reminded me just how much I had forgotten since highschool & college. I agree that there were several scenarios where it took looking at the solution first to jog my memory on how to approach a problem before I could tackle similar problems
