I'm with Daveman here - the knowledge gained at University is almost irrelevant. It's the ability to learn, to synthesise new ideas and be able to think in different ways that is important.

The biggest greatest skill I took away from Uni was to be able to understand difficult concepts quickly and confidently.

Well that and doing past exams and then pissing all over the exam papers (figuratively) come exam time. The lectures, the pracs....meh - assignments had some value (if you do them yourself).

Anyway that's my 2 engineering cents worth. Like a lot of car nerds I've got one them fancy book learning engineering degrees as well.

surely you could 'teach you brain' using stuff that will also be useful later on down the track?

thats like having a perfectly good car sitting there while learning to drive in a tractor

That was my point, some of it is a bit useless. (you will use complex numbers extensively in electronic engineering I believe).I am also a mech engineering student and see the point in lots of the maths you do in year 12.

The Point to all the Pointless maths is to develope the mind and it's processes more than anything. Every time you learn about a new type of maths you are teaching your brain new problem solving techniques.

complex numbers are useless, they model non real stuff, in a real world this doesnt work

some of the stuff is good, well most of it, but there are some things that are just crap

MATH METHODS all the way. i dont think u need to kno how to solve a quadratic equation when workin on big cat trucks.

Ok then, explain how useful complex numbers will be for you in your chosen career as a mechanical engineer?

I disagree with most of what has been said here. I too hate maths, but all the maths topics here are usefull and get used especially if you do Mech Eng. They teach it for a reason.

Every part of a car for instance can be modelled using maths...

Saying most maths is useless is like an architech saying CAD programs are useless..

Maths is only useless when you don't know how to apply it.

vectors are nice for driving the car. but either it's intuitive, or stay in the passengers seat with the slide rule.

work ethic hey, im screwed
ive always relied on how smart i am, got me threw midyears nicely

specialist maths has all the physics maths in it, just lots more
mostly application stuff that doesnt have a set way of doing it, just have to be able to identify how you should start a problem then go from there.....yes the starting is the problem

im good at maths(my top 4 subjects for my ENTER will be english and 3 maths) , im just over trying to remember this stuff from half a year ago

oh well ive still got 3 weeks till the exam, plenty of time to remember

PS. yes vectors are very much a waste of time

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so true