Do people become surveyors because they are addicted to math or do people who become surveyors then become addicted to math?
Anyone who either doesn't like math or who simply can never become adept at it will probably not succeed as a surveyor. They may be functional as survey helpers but not as the ultimately responsible party.
What say ye?
Holy Cow, post: 345000, member: 50 wrote: ...Anyone who either doesn't like math or who simply can never become adept at it will probably not succeed as a surveyor. They may be functional as survey helpers but not as the ultimately responsible party.
What say ye?
I guess I'm an exception to that theory. Prior to any higher level curriculum I exposed myself to after licensure, 8th. grade pre-algebra was the last class I passed. I'm ok with arithmetic, but past that I'm lost. Being horribly dyslexic also compounds my inability to fathom higher mathematics. I fought my way through all of my adult college courses through calculus. I couldn't repeat anything I did in those classes.
Now geometry is a different story. Apparently other people don't visualize, evaluate or process 3-d shapes in their brain like me. Geometry simply makes sense to me because I can "see" it in my mind's eye and the geometric formulae makes perfect sense.
While employed at an engineering firm I also realized that I "see" hydraulics in my mind the same way. Use to do a lot of storm water studies and design when I was employed by engineers, and the formulation made good common sense to me....but I abhor and fear mathematics. A paradox, for sure.
Holy Cow, post: 345000, member: 50 wrote: Do people become surveyors because they are addicted to math or do people who become surveyors then become addicted to math?
Anyone who either doesn't like math or who simply can never become adept at it will probably not succeed as a surveyor. They may be functional as survey helpers but not as the ultimately responsible party.
What say ye?
I'd have to say that surveying came first. When in high school the only math I took was in my freshman year that was the required basic or general math class and in my senior year, one semester of business arithmetic. I just took the necessary required subjects in order to graduate, except for one year of Latin and biology for my science class. Made it easy so I didn't have any homework to do. My cousin kept telling me to take all the math I could get, but I never listened to him. I was out of high school for a year and got into surveying by a fluke. My buddy and I signed up for the Marine Corp and I only got as far as the eye chart when we went to Denver to take our physicals. I was nearsighted so they turned me down. So went back home and started looking for a job, but there wasn't very many, if any jobs available. The paper only had one or two listed and by the time I saw the ads, somebody already had filled the slot. I wasn't able to draw any unemployment, but did have my name in their job seeking base. Anyhow, I got a card in the mail for an engineers aide at the City Engineers Office at the City of Sheridan. Went in for the interview and managed to get the job. After being there for a little while and seeing how limited I was in a math background I wished that I had listened to what my cousin had said. I spent a year and a half with the city and with my basic math could figure out missing dimensions on the old subdivision plats for odd shaped lots, that actually the plats didn't have a lot of info on them for a lot of the lots, when I was drawing maps for water and sewer service connections. Didn't know what I was doing, but it was getting the right answers. I left the City after about a year and a half with them and went to work for a surveyor from Jackson, Missouri that was just finishing up a project locating places to set up AT&T's miccrowave towers from Beech, North Dakota to Billings, Montana. That was finihed about two weeks after I went to work there and then we were on the way to Minnesota to survey buried telephone cable routes. Worked for him the first time from September 1955 till March 1956. I decided that I wanted to get back into surveying again and worked for him again from June 1957 till November 1957 when things kind of went into limbo before his next contracts started. So, I went back to work for the City of Sheridan Engineering Department for another year and a half. I had decided during my first stint with the City, that surveying was in my blood, you might say. I made the decision to enroll in an ICS Course, so signed up for Division 1 of their Civll Engineering Course which started me out in basic math, 1 and 1 = 2 up through trig and the major surveying aspects. After getting though my math courses, I could see that the process I was using to figure missing dimensions was a limited form of Geometry and Trig. Hard to beleive that this has been almost 62 yrears ago that I got into surveying as a career. Never regretted it a bit.
Wow. Great story. Thanks.
Holy Cow, post: 345000, member: 50 wrote: Do people become surveyors because they are addicted to math or do people who become surveyors then become addicted to math?
Anyone who either doesn't like math or who simply can never become adept at it will probably not succeed as a surveyor. They may be functional as survey helpers but not as the ultimately responsible party.
What say ye?
In my case neither. I grew up with a Surveyor/engineer for a father. It was the last thing I wanted to do. Later on in life I took a liking to it. I studied on my own to get a better handle on the math to get my licensure. The part I really like is the historical deed work. That is the biggest accomplishment when trying to find ancient boundaries. Without the original intent, you can't apply the math.
..stay thirsty my friends..
Holy Cow, post: 345000, member: 50 wrote: Do people become surveyors because they are addicted to math or do people who become surveyors then become addicted to math?
Anyone who either doesn't like math or who simply can never become adept at it will probably not succeed as a surveyor. They may be functional as survey helpers but not as the ultimately responsible party.
What say ye?
I spent many summers surveying with my Dad, but never even considered it as a profession. I have a very different experience with math than most people - I struggled with higher algebra and failed to comprehend calculus. Like Paden, geometry came to me so naturally that I remember wondering why it even had to be taught - it was kind of like breathing, it just happened. After high school I attended DeVry for 3 quarters studying electronic engineering, which I loved, and calculus, where I was lost. I came back home, somewhat defeated, and watched reruns of Gilligan's Island all summer without direction. One day my dad called and said "I ran into an acquiantance who's looking for a chainman. You should give him a call." I did, and have been continuously employed surveying every day of my life since then (I did once intentionally take 5 days off between jobs.) Along the way I managed to go back to college and obtain a B.S. in Aquatic Biology and a B.S. in Chemistry. I was a crew cheif and ran an afternoon crew almost every day all through college. When I graduated my employer gave me a very good raise to keep me, so I stayed. I have owned and sold two firms, one very successful with a 15-year run, one not so successful(2008 was a bad time to start). I raised two children and have discovered many things along the way, including the fact that I was quite simply born to be a surveyor. I could not enjoy anything more that surveying, both in the office and in the field. I live it, eat it, drink it and dream it. I come in to the office early many days because I can't wait to get started. I read everything I can about it and strive to learn more every day. One of my biggest concerns after 42 years doing it is how I am going to deal with cutting back and phasing out into retirement. So, back to the point - I'm a geometry lover, a trig enjoyer and lost at calculus... and couldn't love surveying more! Oh, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up - hopefully I'll never grow up!
My experience is the same.
Geometry and Trigonometry just makes sense to me.
Algebra was always baffling but I can do simple formula rearrangement.
They lost me at imaginary numbers, like WTH is that?
It doesn't help that most math teachers are bad teachers. Understanding higher mathematics and ability to convey it to someone else seems to be mutually exclusive talents in the human species.
I literally just heard myself chuckle.
Taking a slight bend with my thoughts on the general subjects.
In high school, I got through algebra one and geometry, but for the life of me could not get algebra 2. Still can't.
A number of years after high school, got an associates in forestry. Had a surveying course or two and math of course. When some of the math was put in "real" terms for me, I got somewhat better at it, though algebra 2 and above are still well beyond my feeble brain.
Found land surveying and stuck with it through prosperous times and recessions.... until 2008. Out of work for years, finally wound up in another field.
To help put in perspective how challenged I am with math in general. My father was an electrical engineer (graduated Cornell). Brother has a phd in physics. Nephew one, phd in physics. Nephew two, dual BS, math and computer science. I am the math retard of the family.
Yet I am light years ahead of understanding math than my present coworkers. As many light years as my family is ahead of me. Which is truly very, very scary.
Although I'm not a surveyor and am now retired as a math teacher, I can't help but post something here, especially after Dave's comment above.
Truth is, Dave is right. Really good math teachers (or any other subject matter) are very hard to find. I started my high school math teaching career after more than 30 years in the business world. The most striking thing to me, and one of the hardest to deal with, was the huge differences in knowledge that students had gained in prior years. A few were ahead of themselves, all of the middle ones had one or more gaping holes in prior learning, and a few were absolute mathematical basket cases. As students move to higher courses, the vocabulary missed in lower classes makes communication very difficult.
It takes about 5 years for an average teacher to become a good teacher. Unfortunately, many potentially good teachers don't last that long in th profession.
For me, math was my beginning. I did very well in school all the way up through high school. But mathematics was my best subject. I was "ahead of the curve" in high school and when my last year rolled around, the school didn't have a math class I could take because I had taken everything they could teach (up through pre-calculus).
I went to the local junior college and started as a civil engineering major. I took all of my math classes, through calculus, and including a class on linear algebra and differential equations. I loved it all and never got lower than a "B+" in any of my math classes.
When I got to my "upper division" course work, I was finished with math and that's when I discovered that land surveying was a major I could take. I switched majors and never looked back.
Like others have posted, trigonometry and geometry are something that just "clicks" with me. People in my family get these confused looks on their faces when I can just explain something that has to do with spacial relationships between things. They think I'm some kind of freakish genius (I tell them that I'm just the "normal kind of genius"). I can work with the principles of algebra just fine (and it has been helpful in assisting my kids with their homework). Calculus is something that I imagine that I could do if I had some refresher on it, but I've yet to run into a situation where I need it, so that seems like a "use it or lose it" skill.
So my point is that for me, mathematics came first. I LOVED it and I think that's what led me to surveying.
I have seen my nephews standing with each other discussing the intricacies of a math problem that is so far out of my grasp that I am convinced they are from another planet or at least some form of idiot savants..... even geniuses compared to the "regular" populous.
Like many surveyors it was Euclid's famous quote from "The Mathematical Function of Surveyors" that originally inspired me:
"Surveyors are not and can not be mathematicians, but in a great many cases they act in a quasi-mathematical capacity with the acquiescence of the parties concerned; and it is important for them to know by what mathematical laws they are to be guided in the discharge of their duties"
I never really cared for math, even though I took every class available, through calculus, in High School. I took statistics in college as it was required for social science (Poly Sci) majors. I took my first surveying job at 25 because of my second major, English; all I knew about surveying was that Thoreau had been a surveyor and I hated my current job.
After reading a couple of comments below I thought I'd come back and add this:
My son is quite literally a math genius. He started counting by 3's, or by 7's, or by 21's in the bathtub when he was 3 years old. heleft me behind when he was about 8 yrs old. He has a degree in Advaced Math - and has no job. I've tried to convince him to teach but he is not interested in speaking to people who are fascinated by math. Makes me very sad...
