Mathematics and Civil

Engineering

Prof. Richard Noss

Dr. Phillip Kent

Institute of Education
University of London

2 projects
MCEE: The Mathematical Components of
Engineering Expertise
‰ what do they do?
‰ what do they use?

REMIT: Reassessing the Roles of

Mathematics and Information Technology in
the University Education of Engineers

1
 The mathematics that
engineers "do"…
“Once you’ve left university you don’t use the maths
you learnt there, ‘squared’ or ‘cubed’ is the most
complex thing you do.”

“Basic addition, multiplication, division, subtraction.

That is the sort of basic bread and butter of the
maths that I use at work, whereas slightly more
higher level maths doesn’t get used every day. …
There is a whole lot of maths in what we do that we
don’t need to think about really, because other
people have done it for us.”

A division of mathematical
labour
Interfaces between different practices: designers,
analytical specialists, software.

Mathematics is transformed as it travels across

these interfaces
“the specialist took on the task of carrying out whatever [advanced]
statistics was needed in order to give us some figures for
design.… although the complicated maths was out of the range of
my boss or me, once the specialist had worked it out then it was
within the range of us to understand what he had done at some
level, to be able to use the results of it.”

A kind of mathematical understanding which seems

different from the premises of the “service”
paradigm.

2
 Mathematical interfaces with
technology
“Engineers have to have some sort of intellectual visualisation of
what is happening inside the black box, in order to decide which is
the appropriate method. If they didn’t have that, we could only
teach them rules, ‘use this method for that type of thing’. The
engineers have to understand what’s happening inside the black
box, even though they’re not explicitly doing the calculations.”

A visualisation of the inside workings is not always

required to make an informed judgement about it.
An engineer needs to know that software can make
mistakes of a certain kind, but not necessarily how
those mistakes arise in detail.

Experience in using the software gives a growing

appreciation of its limitations.

Understanding through use

Mathematics-based software makes mathematics
easier to use, and this changes the culture of
learning

“In the past, doing hand calculations time after time

gave you an understanding, but the same thing can be
done on computers, say a spreadsheet. You can tune
the input numbers and watch the result. Even if you
don’t know what’s going on, so long as you can rely on
the computer’s calculations then you are developing an
understanding. You never before had the time or the
money to do that. I don’t think many academics have
learnt themselves that way, yet.”

3
Harriet and the Skew Bridge

Specialist to Harriet :
the component you need is ε sin2 θ ….
… because strain is a tensor, not a vector,
… and you can calculate it using ‘Mohr’s Circle of strain’

4
 3 Observations
Mathematics surfaces as a ‘need to know’ in
the context of making choices about design

Harriet's knowledge is transformed with

respect to its initial form

Harriet knew something was wrong

4 Questions
What does Harriet know?

How does she know it?

Could Harriet have done without this

knowledge?

Could Harriet have acquired the knowledge

she needed in different ways?

5
 More on knowledge:
structure and geometry
Professional and Mathematical knowledge is
coordinated
“… the bending moment in a beam is a significant
shape. It’s a parabola, and not just any old parabola,
but one that represents the structural behaviour. ”

Engineers think about what algebraic curves

“mean” in structural terms (quite different from
the mathematician)

Feel is qualitative and intuitive

Knowledge from professional and formal learning

Some issues for education

The balance between explicit analytical skills and
“qualitative” appreciation of mathematical models

The kind of mathematical understanding that

modelling represents: “mathematical literacy”?

An epistemological challenge: not simply about

doing more or less “mathematics”, but about
questioning the interfaces between engineering and
mathematical knowledge, as differently experienced
by practicing and student engineers.

6
 REMIT project
• look closely at the role of mathematics in
university engineering courses, and offer a
vision of future directions for the teaching of
mathematics in engineering education
• take a radical view of the kinds of
mathematical knowledge and skills that in
the future will need to be taught in
engineering courses at university level
• take detailed account of the possibilities of
IT-based teaching and learning methods.

Our coordinates
Prof. Richard Noss r.noss@ioe.ac.uk
Dr Phillip Kent p.kent@ioe.ac.uk

www.ioe.ac.uk/rnoss/REMIT