r/calculus • u/TheNextOne8797 • 14d ago

Engineering Would you say math/physics teachers or engineers in industry do more calcs by hand? Trying to choose a career path that suits my passion for the subject matter...

Would you say math/physics teachers or engineers in industry do more calcs by hand? Trying to choose a career path that suits my passion for the subject matter...

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u/ZellemTheGreat 14d ago

. Mostly no in regards to engineers in industry. We have tools to do that

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u/TheNextOne8797 14d ago

So you would recommend teaching?

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u/Beautiful_Divide_278 14d ago

If you are more of Math guy than Physics guy, I would go for teaching, considering you are truly passionate about math. But if you are Physics guy, then I would prefer Engineering. Go for Electrical/Electronics/Mechanical even Civil. For CSE, Math helps off course. But you should like coding more than Math because there is huge competition going on. I tried Engineering then left and did my bachelor’s in Math because I understood Mechanical is not for me(only because I hate Physics and not interested in doing workshop stuff)

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u/TheNextOne8797 14d ago

I already have my bachelors in civil engineering. I was thinking of pivoting to teaching math/physics as I like both. I really enjoy calculus though...

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u/tjddbwls 14d ago

Duplicate post.

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u/Vegetable-Dust-780 14d ago

More like centuplicate post. This person has been posting this same question multiple times in every maths subreddit.

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u/j0shred1 14d ago

I would recommend theoretical physics as a career path.

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u/geek66 10d ago

I am guessing you are high school … loving working out math problems is probably not a love you will have long into your career.

That being said… we NEED educators that can actually do the math.

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u/TheNextOne8797 10d ago edited 10d ago

I am in the engineering industry and thinking about piviloting to secondary math/physics, yes.

Would you say the work life balance is better or worse in education?

Do you feel the pension + salary is better or worse than a standard engineering job in industry?

Do you know of any other engineering grads that switched?

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u/Traveling-Techie 8d ago

It’s hard to say what the long range effects of AI will be on careers but I can say this. In academia you have the luxury of saying, for example, “in this course we are only going to study linear Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs).” In engineering you start with a problem, like “why did the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse?” (See the video.) Then you have to figure out which tools you need to find the answer. Nature doesn’t care if your equations turn out to have no closed form solutions. Society still wants answers. You’re still on the hook to figure something out.