Autodidact
Well-Known Member
First, I'd like to post up a photograph of me taken while in the prime of life:
So, I've spent most of my life almost completely ignorant of any kind of mathematical knowledge. Something happened to me when I was a kid that caused me to completely shut down while I was at school, especially in math, and no one ever really tried to help, for reasons I won't try to speculate about here. Anyway, enough of that sob story.
So, I find myself as an adult who suddenly realized that I wanted to design airplanes. Actually I've always known that I wanted to design airplanes, but I suddenly realized that I needed to understand math to do it - it was a little like waking up from some kind of decades long stuporous state - or at least from the math impairment part of it. So I would try to teach myself starting at the beginning more or less, but was not successful because I was just too tired and stressed out from work (another strange story). I remember ordering a book written by Evans, of Volksplane fame I believe, a simple book as aircraft design books go, and trying to read it and not being able to make any sense of it whatsoever; I couldn't understand any of it, didn't even know what a "moment" was so I couldn't understand the concept of slicing the half-wing up in order find the stress in the spar caps, and could not figure out how a nomogram worked to save my life.
Finally, at some point, I found myself (through nothing more than dumb luck) in a position where I didn't have to work and had a place to live, didn't have a family, and could devote 4 to 6 hours a day and sometimes more to studying mathematics in glorious solitude. It was very therapeutic. But now I'm sort of a math snob, or even a math nazi; I shout down from my little hilltop to people to "READ THE BOOK!" while at the same time forgetting that without the time and serenity I'd been granted through not having to work, it would have been impossible for me to learn anything at all about mathematics and aircraft aerodynamic and structural design and how they are intrinsically connected. But I also remember having people try to explain things to me about aircraft design and I would just look at them like I was some kind of Lemur staring into a bright light. So, I would like to apologize to any and all for being a math snob/nazi, but also point out that the basic knowledge must be understood, or the more intricate ideas cannot be imparted even verbally. If you cannot get past the distractions of daily life so as to be able to concentrate on study of the fundamentals, then that is the first problem that needs to be solved: find a way to devote at least 3 hours a day, and at least 3 days a week to becoming proficient in basic Calculus. It is possible to design an aircraft without actually using Calculus, but I do not think it is possible to understand the books and the terms, symbology, and nomenclature - in even the simple books - without understanding the basics of Calculus. But basic Calculus is really not that difficult and there are several good books, easy to understand, on the subject: Calculus for Dummies, The Streetwise guide to Calculus, Idiots guide to Calculus, etc., in spite of their titles, these are actually very good books. Software is not a panacea; software does not design things for you, it only does the tedious busy work of calculation so as to save time and energy.
Language solves the problem of communication, computers solve the problem of having to write the words out manually, but in order to use the computer to communicate, you have to understand a language. Airplanes are math, and math is a language.
So, I've spent most of my life almost completely ignorant of any kind of mathematical knowledge. Something happened to me when I was a kid that caused me to completely shut down while I was at school, especially in math, and no one ever really tried to help, for reasons I won't try to speculate about here. Anyway, enough of that sob story.
So, I find myself as an adult who suddenly realized that I wanted to design airplanes. Actually I've always known that I wanted to design airplanes, but I suddenly realized that I needed to understand math to do it - it was a little like waking up from some kind of decades long stuporous state - or at least from the math impairment part of it. So I would try to teach myself starting at the beginning more or less, but was not successful because I was just too tired and stressed out from work (another strange story). I remember ordering a book written by Evans, of Volksplane fame I believe, a simple book as aircraft design books go, and trying to read it and not being able to make any sense of it whatsoever; I couldn't understand any of it, didn't even know what a "moment" was so I couldn't understand the concept of slicing the half-wing up in order find the stress in the spar caps, and could not figure out how a nomogram worked to save my life.
Finally, at some point, I found myself (through nothing more than dumb luck) in a position where I didn't have to work and had a place to live, didn't have a family, and could devote 4 to 6 hours a day and sometimes more to studying mathematics in glorious solitude. It was very therapeutic. But now I'm sort of a math snob, or even a math nazi; I shout down from my little hilltop to people to "READ THE BOOK!" while at the same time forgetting that without the time and serenity I'd been granted through not having to work, it would have been impossible for me to learn anything at all about mathematics and aircraft aerodynamic and structural design and how they are intrinsically connected. But I also remember having people try to explain things to me about aircraft design and I would just look at them like I was some kind of Lemur staring into a bright light. So, I would like to apologize to any and all for being a math snob/nazi, but also point out that the basic knowledge must be understood, or the more intricate ideas cannot be imparted even verbally. If you cannot get past the distractions of daily life so as to be able to concentrate on study of the fundamentals, then that is the first problem that needs to be solved: find a way to devote at least 3 hours a day, and at least 3 days a week to becoming proficient in basic Calculus. It is possible to design an aircraft without actually using Calculus, but I do not think it is possible to understand the books and the terms, symbology, and nomenclature - in even the simple books - without understanding the basics of Calculus. But basic Calculus is really not that difficult and there are several good books, easy to understand, on the subject: Calculus for Dummies, The Streetwise guide to Calculus, Idiots guide to Calculus, etc., in spite of their titles, these are actually very good books. Software is not a panacea; software does not design things for you, it only does the tedious busy work of calculation so as to save time and energy.
Language solves the problem of communication, computers solve the problem of having to write the words out manually, but in order to use the computer to communicate, you have to understand a language. Airplanes are math, and math is a language.
