An Engineer
We gave a variety of responses to that question ; our lecturer listened to us patiently and at the end he gave us his answer .
" If you give an Orange to a Mathematician , he ' ll look at it and he ' ll tell you the size , shape and weight of that Orange ".
( Image courtesy : Severin Winkler , FreeImages . com )
" What ' s the difference between a Mathematician and an Engineer ?"
This one question that our lecturer asked 28 years ago , while we were in 2nd year Electrical Engineering at OUCE , changed the way I approached my course work , profoundly influenced the choices I made in my profession and positively impacted my career progress years to come .
" But if you give that Orange to an Engineer , she ' ll peel it and eat it ." " Mathematics is the foundation . Engineering is the application of that knowledge ."
Yes . I learnt a lot more at OU . But this one lesson remained with me , traveled with me around the world and became part of me ever since .
Before that class , I would look at V = IR and tell myself : hence , I = V / R , i . e . the current is inversely proportional to resistance .
After that class , I started looking at V = IR and started telling myself : hence , one can control the speed of a fan by controlling the resistance of the circuit . ( Agreed : That ' s not the best way of controlling the speed , as it results in high energy loss , but you get the point about formula vs . application ).
After I completed my Masters in Engineering in the USA and applied for a job at an Advanced Technology firm , they felt that I can take one of the 3 roles and left the choice to me - A ) Product R & D B ) Consumer Applications of the new technology and C ) Platform Development . I chose the 2nd option , Consumer Applications of the Technology . Our early work resulted in many applications and one of the popular applications of that technology that came into being later on , is now the ubiquitous iPhone Siri . The choice I made that day was completely driven by the lesson I learnt at OUCE years before . That choice proved to be a perfect option for me as I enjoyed immensely the challenges and the pleasure of dreaming up , rolling out the applications and conducting consumer studies . Nothing else could have beaten that experience of seeing that the applications that I am a part of being used by millions of consumers worldwide daily .
I owe that to my undergrad lecturer and that is my keepsake from OU . What is your takeaway from OUCE ?
Vijaya Kurada , EE 91 , ( MS and MBA from USA ) worked for BHEL , Nuance Communications ( USA and India ), GE Money Americas ( USA ) and Acxiom Corporation ( USA ) in the past , and currently lives in London . She ' s currently teaching , writing , mentoring and consulting in topics related to AI , Mobile Apps and Emerging Technologies . Vijaya is a co-author of an US Patent in Natural Language Dialog Analysis .
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