Education majors are probably the worst thing about the education system.

Apsolootelee correct. I spelled appsolootelee that way because that app as in phone apps, loot as in money, lee as in Robert E.

See, I can explain why I spelled it the way I did. I don't need to spell it correctly.

I have to admit that this would improve my spelling treemendously

Three times four is elebinty.

I'm a phooking genius !!!

Much as I hate to say it...that might fly nowadays!

a lot of insight and experience in that quote.

FWIW, a few years ago a survey of incoming students showed that education majors had the lowest test scores and GPAs coming out of high school. AND they had the highest GPA when exiting the university. The math behind that is definitely not good.

She forgot the part where, at the end of it all, no matter the outcome, a bolus of smoke must be blown up and past their precious little anal sphincters.


We are scrawed.

That ought to work out real well when laying out a bolt hole pattern or hobbing a gear.

Should make for great future surveyors too.

Common Core. More of the dumbing down of America.

Wonder if it would be OK with her, if giving her change and it wasn't enough, as long as you tried?

Already following some of those guys.

If the data collector doesn't spit it out, it doesn't happen.

Perfect example why China is kicking our asses and will continue to kick our ass in education.

You would be shocked how easy it is to be a surveyor these days.....Engineer does all the calcs in the office and loads the program. Most guys are using a "total station" or "GPS" and they simply follow the instructions on the screen.... Anyone that can run a basic computer can be a surveyor.
Not many guys can calc in the field anymore.

No more logarithms, azimuths, or using chains?

It's been so long since the Army spent 6 weeks training me as one of their best surveyers ever, I had to look up how to spell logarithm.

Laffin, yep that is all there is to it.

So then Romney won the election, right? I can show my work.

I worked a night job in a machine shop while in collage. Owners sun was a stoner and drunk. He was supposed to be using a horizontal mill and an indexing head to hob and gear. He got the math almost right but when he got to the end he found out almost don't count. When I got to work he was gone but there was a note stuck on the indexing head asking his dad if he wanted one big tooth or two little ones.

Almost is seldom close enough.

Hmmmm....Lois Lerner...the IRS guru couldn't compute 25% of 300! Said she wasn't too good at math!!

Wonder who she's spreading her legs for????????????

She needs to stop teachinh and start doing porn. That she cant let everyone know how db she when she is just moaning

I've always wanted to be a surveyor, likely my love for the outdoors and math. How often does one get to combine math with the out of doors.

I majored in Physics in college, before lust tore me away from those pursuits and I entered into 15 years of public service. EMS/Police/Fire. Even switched my Reserve MOS to Military Police from Forward Observer. 15 years was all I could take due to extreme cynicism.

Given my math background, I got into surveying real easy, and dealing with ticks, snakes and poison ivy was a whole lot more predictable than dealing with the general public.

Of course, if only you could eliminate the animosity caused by land and money amongst family and neighbors, it would be great.

Frankly, surveying a thousand acre Christmas tree farm, and camping on the site, is about as close to deer camp as work can get.

Being able to convert slope measured chains to horizontal feet in order to retrace a 150 year old survey, while drinking coffee in a tent = good times!

There are a few more ways to do that. Population ecology is one that I like.

I retired from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department as a State wide Survey Crew Chief. In that time I did a lot of different types of Surveying from New road location to Bridge Surveys to collecting GPS Data. Started when using chains and doing calculations by hand (no calculators) and finished up using total stations and data collectors and GPS. I fought and lost the battle of the need to teach the older ways of doing things so that the young people could see why we did certain things the way that we did them. I predict that there will be future problems with design and construction because of the simple fact the things will be overlooked because the younger generation will have never learned the simple reasoning of why certain data is needed and how to get it correctly. Now I am not condemning the new methods but I do think that there are steps in the learning that are being skipped that will come back to bite us. miles

That is a problem which is epidemic in countless areas of science, engineering and probably many other general fields of work.

Like, how to recognize a well cap on the adjoiner, when you are subdividing lots to make sure each one has a potential septic drain field...

I'm not defending our illiterate, our failing education system, or fools shown in the OP, but in the US we test everyone. You think China tests everyone? How many rural illiterate peasants and factory drones in China show up on their "test scores"?

Yep. discipline, self control, and work ethic.

On the averages, kids are getting softer and lazier. And lets not forget, kids are just a function of the parents & teachers.

There's more, but I dont feel like ranting.

Common Core is worse than that. It is full on brain washing!!! People that aren't aware of what's going on should damn well get educated. This is more of changing America from with in.

As that venerable scribe Helen Thomas said & I quote,"This country's going down the toilet!".

Algebra courses have become calculator/computer operating courses. This deprives students of brain training that goes beyond just getting an answer.

Oh, the stories we could tell...

I had a guy on a survey once, the day after he set the corners for a tract of land I was going through his field notes and I noticed an odd traverse going into one of his corner sets. The traverse was going close to line then turned about 270* for 25 feet then 90* for 15 feet then they set the corner. When he got back in that evening I asked him why he put in all the additional points. He told me that the corner fell inside of an old building that was being used a woodshed. I didn't see in the notes where he tied the building so I naturally asked if he tied it. He responded with "You didn't tell me to tie it."

Yes, it's just fine if ones billion $$$ mission crashes into Mars as long as he/she can eloquently explain why.

I can remember receiving some credit if one layed out their logic and simply made a math error, but the correct answer carried about 2/3 rds of the weight.

On another note, a college prof buddy brings his class out for a spring field trip each year. He equips groups of 4 students with a hammer, stakes, chaining pins, a 300 ft tape, and the needed dimensions and challenges them to lay out a square acre. I've not seen it successfully accomplished yet.

Yup. Actually the girl (woman) in the vid was trying to support the idea of understanding rather than simple rote memory (which isn't a bad thing in my opinion). If a person truly understands something, generally, in communicating their reasoning, that person will discover their own errors. That said, rote learning does have its place as well.

lmao


"why is it 12, why do I know that?"


cause you'd be ridiculed as a dumbazz if you didn't!


jhc, hold up 4 fingers, do it again, now once more with feeling!


omg! there's your sign.

As a math prof I demanded both understanding and execution.

I assure you the "understanding" she's hawking is as much about making things easier as it is about real understanding.

I'd hear people say all the time 'I'm never going to use algebra', perhaps not. As you alluded to, algebra (or any math) helps one develop analytical thought and ability. It truly pays dividends in many other ways, but that has nothing to do with 'American Idol'

lmao

At least he tried to use his brain.

I got a crew that would have traversed into the building, set the corner, and never told me about the building.

That is the point he did traverse into the building and set the corner. He never told me until I noticed the weird traverse and asked him about it. Sure enough I got a call the next day from the property owner asking why I set a corner in his woodshed.

This is the same guy that a few months earlier came back and said he set all the corners except one because when he went to stake it it went through a building. Now I knew the corner didn't fall in the building because a different crew had as-built the site before. I asked him why he didn't put in a new traverse point so he could get line of site to the corner. He told me he never though about that, he just assumed that since the angle he turned went into the building that the corner fell inside.

Lord, there's two crews like that?

I thought I had a lock on trying to corral dumbphuckery.

Yep at least two, I don't know where that guy works anymore but I know somewhere on the west coast there is a crew that would give anyone you got a run for their money.

On second thought, in the current job climate he is very likely unemployed

Yup, yup, and yup!




Not sure that I agree with you on that, but I'm sure it will play that way in some/many cases. No matter how simple or difficult "they" make it, there will always be a need for good, intelligent, thinking people to do the presentation when it comes to educating the masses. For lots of reasons, that is often like leading a horse to fire and expecting him to drink.

You provide all the ammo we need to validate mathman's statement.

Which college did you attend and what did you study?

another member of my fan club. Note, DF, I was not an education major, nor do I teach to the education majors. The folks that washout of my classes have been known to go there on their next stop out of the university however.

Now, try to think up something intelligent before someone mistakes YOU for a failed education major (almost inconceivable to be that stupid - but hey, it is you I'm talking about, and you started the insults).

Broad brush strokes are not equivalent to intelligence, or intelligent thought.....just saying.

I have been telling people that forever. China isn't the only ones selecting different blocks of contestants in that race btw.

What outs you every time as an intellectual phony, BrentDodger, is your incessant appeal to authority, that authority being yourself. And when that doesn't cut it, as it never does, you call names. Fail.

You are just another whiner oldtrapper. Now saddle up ol' Adhominem and ride.... What a baby.

Nuthin like verification.




Bwahahahahhaah!

Hardy Har.....Fair enough, it may not be as simple as I let on but in no way does it take the brainpower once required.
I am not a surveyor, I am a Gradesetter for a large hi way and excavation contractor, I always say I do "survey type" work because no one knows what grade setting is. I do all the topo work, as-builts etc. I use the same trimble tsc data collectors, gps systems, and total stations that ya'll do.
My remarks were based on the increasing volume of idiot surveyors I have worked with in the last 18 years. I cant tell you the last time I had a set of control points that would check in, "surveyors"...at least here can no longer change offsets in the field, calc a proper slope stake, or topo anything without missing breaklines, swales, etc. Makes for some [bleep] up quantities on my end.
Just last week I had a set of PPP stakes that were supposed to be 10' offsets, guy started staking and they were 5 footers.....I told the guy...aint gonna work, I need 10's because this certain section of road was in fill and I needed the 10's so they would'nt be wiped out when the grading guys started to place fill. "Party Chief" tells me "hey.....engineer gives us a thumb drive with the points on it and we stake em".....I said you cant re-calc em? He says "Nope....engineer does all the calcs".
This is an every day thing for me over the last 10 years or so.....when I first got in this surveyors could do just about anything from the seat of their pickup....now days its touch screens, gps and pre loaded points.

I knew where you were coming from, but you are mistaking a surveyor for a "point staker" and an instrument man from a party chief.

Surveying may not take the brain power that it once did, but what does now days with modern computers. I know your complaints, the trouble is that most "surveyors" (field guys) now days know how to work the instruments and which buttons to push on the data collector, and they know what to write down in the notes. But the only reason they know to do these things is that they were told to by someone once. Most guys will write down angles and distances for a traverse but they could not tell you what they are doing it for or why they have to do it.

The stories I told were all at the last company I worked for, the one now I would not employ someone so incompetent. I give my crew the calc positions of the actual things they are going to stake and a set of plans. They check in with the contractor when they get on site and confirm the staking, then they calc their own offsets for each point as they stake, if they need to adjust an offset from 5 to 10 feet then they can do that in a matter of seconds. For my crews it is a minimum requirement that they know how to perform these simple calculations. It isn't that hard it is just that some people are either not trusted and told that they can't do calcs in the field or they are just to lazy to do it for you.

All that said we are still not talking surveying, we are talking construction staking which is a long ways from what an actual Land Surveyor does. True Land Surveying can be simple one second and extremely complex the next. I guess my point is that you are mistaking a point staker (or trained monkey as we call them) for a surveyor, and that is just not the case.

FWIW I have never had an engineer provide the calcs for us to stake. I have a suspicion that you are not working with real land surveyors, no self respecting land surveyor would trust an engineers calculations for anything.

FWIW, some engineers - or office surveyors - do not let their field crews exercise field adjustments for liability reasons. Welcome to the new society.


And the now days technology does lend itself to diminished comprehension of the job at hand, but in the hands of someone that knows what they are doing, and why they are doing it, and the capabilities of their equipment, some serious work can get done in the cab of a truck.

Utilizing proper data entry and coding, I can have a job all but drafted except for text by the time it hits the office. Change datums on a site, rotate all improvements, whatever it takes.

Difference being, I am not the lowest paid person on staff.

Every conventional data collector system affords alignment and profile staking. If they are still doing point staking on a H&V centerline alignment, your boys are working in the stone age with a micromanager at the helm.

I still have personal clients (that my FT employer doesn't mind me taking care of) that call on me for some "value based field adjustments" when they are looking to improve the bottom line.

But being able to balance a poorly designed site, on the spot, is a commodity not afforded by hiring the lowest bidder.



Word.

Trust and verify, probably. But trust alone gets you 300 linear feet of curb, and a pile of bricks from a catch basin to put in your yard as a trophy.

I remember the night I learned my multiplication facts. My dad handed me a bunch of paper and a pencil and told me to fill up the paper front and back writing the multiplication tables over and over. Said he'd be back up in an hour and that I'd better know them. I already knew what that "Fact" was so, in an hour I knew the damn multiplication facts too. I've known them ever since.

I'll have to watch the video later but I can imagine what is going on. As an administrator I had to evaluate teachers in the classroom. As, I believe Ronald Reagan said, "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.� This is very true in the field of education as well.

Alan

I know from past experience that things are never simple. I have done a lot of R/W staking for the AHTD to use for buying the R/W, and a lot of times on the plans, the plus and out on a point would not match the bearing and distance. Easy to calculate in the field if you know which one they want to hold. A simple phone call would work, if you could get the correct design Engineer on the phone, which was seldom. I would always run a closure on a set of plans before I went to the field with them. It saved a lot of headaches. miles

I've got an old friend who is both a professional civil engineer and a professional land surveyor. I bet you guys could have some interesting conversations.

Was working for an excavation company checking grade and such. Was laying out a court and staking it for final rock when I noticed a slight error in the surveyor stakes. I asked the survey crew about a possible mistake in their data and they were insulted, said their data could not be wrong. I asked them is they wanted one 1' stem in the road or two 6" steps. They rechecked and sheepishly told me their data was a foot off.

This hangs outside my office. It can get a little sporty at times with the engineers but it is mostly all in fun.

I have a brother-in-law engaged in the same dual profession. At the last 4th of July family get together he was talking about starting a business putting nanoseconds in a small cardboard box and selling them like pet rocks.

I know two as well. Both got their LS before the state changed the licensing requirements, so they were grandfathered in. But as the saying goes, "Man's got to know his limitations," so they usually keep out of the surveying, but do get involved in the construction staking, on their own design projects.

Keeping in mind the hubris that goes along with professional work, I've never seen a CE admit they were wrong, but they seem to be more pleased when the surveyor finds a "discrepancy" before improvements were built as opposed to afterwards.

Keep a mirror handy.

I've got it on my monitor, chief.

I'm my biggest fan and worst critic, everyday.

I know what you mean. While teaching calculus, differential equations and the like for a few years I found it hard to avoid an occasional public mistake.

Ask my wife.

Making a survey "miscalculation", even if it doesn't go public, burns me up to no end, sometimes for days.

Of course, with the current curriculum of the OP, all I have to do is explain my logic, even if faulty, and all is forgiven.

I've been too hard on myself for no reason.

On a side note, my college diffyQ professor's wife was my local physician. Lucky for me, he had a good sense of humor. I'd walk into class and say, "Did your wife tell you she saw me nekkid yesterday?" He'd reply, "She doesn't talk business with me." Left the rest of the class scratching their heads, no doubt.

I have worked with an engineer before and the plan set was all sorts of [bleep] up. I asked him what the deal with it was he told me the plans are not wrong, but it was the 80/20 rule. He elaborated, you see once a plan set gets to the point that they are 80% correct the remaining 20% consists of too much tedious work and it is not cost efficient to correct the remaining 20%. It is best just to let the set go to construction and between him, the contractor, and the surveyor they will iron the remaining "dependencies" as they come up.

You see the plans weren't wrong it was designed that way.

As you work things out, keep asking him if the "dependency of the moment" is part of the 20% or the 80%.

I had fun with him alright, and he has actually became a good friend since then.

At one point in the project we were tasked with staking a 6' wall that was lining one side of a storm pond. The pond sloped up at a 2:1 for 2 feet then because of setback issues with a roadway that was part of the design in a fill section, on one side the wall was needed. The bottom of pond was at say elevation 100.00; then then up 2 feet at 2:1 puts you 4 feet back with a finished grade of 102.00. The designed grade of the bottom of wall was 102.00.

So you basically have a 6' wall built in a retention pond on a 2:1 slope without over excavating for a foundation and keying the wall into the native ground, and this wall was also by default part of the structural integrity of the road because the fill was up against it.

I asked him if he thought 80% of that wall would still be standing in a few years.

Here is one from today.

Our engineers are working on a grading plan for a plat, there is also a plat to the southeast of our site. as part of the city requirement between our plat and the piece to the southeast we are to finish the water loop connection. They are going to stub a line to our property and set an air release valve and maintenance manhole just their side of the property line, then we will finish the loop for them once our plat gets underway.

We call and get the other engineers CAD files so we can connect to them with our design. In a meeting this afternoon I notice a jog in the property line from said engineer. We have surveyed this line and know that is not the case. I call said engineer and let him know the issue that we can't be having a air release and maintenance manhole in a back yard of our plat.

I call the engineer to see if I can get in contact with his surveyor and see why they put the jog in the property line. The engineer informs me that they never had it surveyed, but that they used a PDF that showed the property line and they tried to scale and fit it to some of their line work.

I just finished a 60 acre High School campus. The school district never had the money to begin with and "value engineered" the whole thing. After 18 months we were on addendum 16, only problem was the school district refused to pay the engineer to build a new CAD file for the surveyors so the last 8 months or so all of our stakes had the old info from addendum 6. I basically had to field fit every piece of concrete and asphalt from then on......about 250,000 squares worth.....Got to the point where the survey stakes were kind of like the map in the mall.....You are "kind of" here.

That definitely fits with your screen name.

The new math...

I used to put this on the back of my student's tests when they would whine...

If I recall correctly, we never had to consider time zone differences with those problems.

Not surprised this thread went here. Leave it up to surveyors to bring it here. I have my own VERY WELL EARNED reasons for hating and speaking against the civil engineering profession, none of which are described here. Oh wait...........one of them is that I hate surveyors who wannabe engineers.

IMHO....surveyors = wannabe engineers......every last one of them. Okay, almost. Many flunked out of engineering school and had to choose second fiddle, which leads to their ego problem. This is quite common. This also comes from me witnessing soooo many of them starting their own firms (and finding some loser engineer as a partner) so that they can illegally practice engineering by preparing plans and engineering documents......and nobody can stop them. They want to produce plans and I've even seen them stamp them in incredible acts of ego, even tho not enough of them get reported to the state BTR's. They beech and piss and moan about civil engineer incompetence.........but then they wanna be one. Totally inexplicably hypocritical beyond belief.

Anybody who envies another due to ego problems has a big bad case of Little Weiner Syndrome.

Wish I had back the tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses I lost due to company surveyor staking errors. Even in gov't now.......I still have to deal with incorrect boundary surveys and faulty simple legal descriptions and plats and dedications fraught with legal errors that are typical questions on the state RLS/PLS exams and should be avoidable.

Nope..........engineers are always right.

You mean like the engineer that tried to survey in my clients boundary line by using a approximately scaled PDF in AutoCAD and designing his client improvements right up to his property line. Yeah engineers never try to do survey work and fhug it up.

Seriously dude my experience with engineers is mostly positive and the fun I poke is just that fun. It is also my experience that only insecure ass holes can't take a little joke every now and then.

Nope.........Engineers are always right.

I know.

Now Architecs.......

Don't get me started...........

You ever wonder if an Architec finishes drawing something up and goes "now figure out how to build THAT mother phugger"

Don't get me started HW........

yup they are always right, up to the point there is actually another human involved, but engineers probably stroke one off with their mouse in the same hand as their dick.

BJ,

Have another brewski, dude.

We are responsible for all life-safety things.......according to the law. This in fact........gets old.........including being held responsible for the contractor's life-safety ineptitude.

wow, looks like you stroke off to a picture of yourself.

It gets really sickening listening to engineers who think they are so much more important than everyone else because they can stick a pe behind their name.

It's called a fuggin coordinate system use it!

That's the whole entire point of this life on our planet, BJ. This is why this country promotes education and scholastic achievement so much.

I did it.....and you didn't. I get to....and you don't.

Otherwise we're all equal progressives.

GTFU.

I think the point that is being missed is that you should be gaining an understanding rather than just memorizing a bunch of stuff that you can't really apply well. Assuming that is true, explaining your 'logic' should allow you to see your own error. Failing that, whoever you communicate your logic to should be more than happy to show your error. Certainly people don't all think things out the same way. There can be many ways to arrive at correct answers, though some may be more efficient. Hearing a student's explanation of their thinking can reveal potential thought pathways that may later get them in trouble. I don't have an opinion one way or another on Common Core. I do think the woman used a very poor example in what she did.



Quite the contrary. I think students who explain their logic should be learning to self critique their thinking.

Yeah right, You shoulda seen the way we had to build some stuff because of some halfwit engineer.

Math is fun, Ebonics is more funner!

Wow, a lot of angst there. Glad I didn't pair up with some loser engineer and open my own business. Hate to be on your bad side.



you're in public work now?

I see the problem.

Klik,
I agree with what your saying, but in the long run, partial credit for disciplines where there is a definitive right and wrong answer is, well, wrong, imo.

Explaining logic with a mentor who can correct your reasoning should be what teaching is all about, more than just red-lining an answer sheet, but the latter is what we have more of these days.

And that general philosophy of "there are no winners or losers, everyone wins just for trying" is diluting the pool of people that strive for excellence in their school work - that they can eventually take to their professional life. No incentive for going the extra mile.

I had one that figured everyone was finally getting the hang of seemlessly converting his drawings, so he switched to metric.

And that ladies and gents is largely what is wrong with the country today.

I might add that those that go the extra mile are actually punished because it makes the slackers look and feel bad about themselves. Hurts their inflated sense of selfworth.

Ever see a power line alignment designed off google earth?

Good times.

Once upon a time.....6-8 or so years ago........somebody devised and patented a device that attached to a grader or a scaper that would automatically control the machine to cut or fill to the design grades......programmed right from the construction dwgs. This was intended to eliminate the staking profession entirely and lost profit sharing bonuses for all formerly involved company non-stakers. Whatever happened to this TERRIFIC technology?

It worked about as good as the people programing the machine and the engineers designing the plans.

Is this concept still being pursued and moving forward? Just kinda curious as I don't read the trade magazines any more.

All major Grading outfits run GPS, Laser, and Sonar controlled machines. It does cut down on some labor but you still need a human to verify and troubleshoot. There is also a million situations where it just is'nt feasable to use autos.

They use it some for large mass grading projects where you can upload a DTM and go, but beyond that it is pretty limited. Roadway projects and tight compact sites are not friendly to the tech.

Full swing ahead....Topcon and Trimble are the two major players. Probably more so Trimble since it has partnered with CAT and all the Cat iron now comes pre wired for Trimble controls.
Over the last ten years with the Glonaas Sats coming online the GPS has become pretty accurate as long as you know its limitations. If you have bad residuals/ tolerances and your wondering why things are'nt matching up its your fault. If the Model does'nt match the design it's the moron who built the models fault. Junk in...Junk out. Eliminating man hours is always the goal.

Both HW's,

Okay.....alright.....I'll let it go. Both civil engineering and surveying/staking are tough-ass, not-very-rewardable perfectionist professions. I think you'll agree. Gotta be perfect every last time or you get yer ass kicked........not to mention embarrassed.

Surveyors can calc and stake 1000 points for a site..........and if only 1 of them is calced/staked wrong.......then the company pays and there is major fallout internally and externally reputation wise.

Same goes for civils. 100 plan sheets in a set.......with 1000 lines drawn per sheet............and when 1 line is drawn wrong.........even when alllll the others are drawn correctly.......then the company pays and there is major fallout internally and externally reputation wise.

Am I incorrect here guys???

Absolutely correct, that is why I don't get too worked up over the razzing that we (engineers and surveyors) give each other. We are human after all and nobody is perfect. I guess that is the rub with this type of curriculum in the OP, in life there are many, many things that you need to be perfect at or you are a failure. Now just so long as you can explain why you mis calc'ed the plans or blew a grade you are just fine. That doesn't fly in my profession or yours.

Plus we never screw up anyways it was the drafters fault, right....

I say we blame it all on the Secretary.........

Many years ago I was enjoying a cigar in the local smoke shop while I graded diff eq papers. One of the guys sitting high up on the shoe shine bench saw I was laying down a lot of red ink.

"Hey professor, why are you so hard on those guys? It's the summer semester after all."

"In a few years when you're on the runway and those big turbofans are spooling up, think about who designed them and the rest of the plane. Do you want them to be the guys who skated through?"

Fugg that, she is an evil bitch, I ain't gettin on her bad side.

Came into this thread a little late, but as one with both professional licenses (not grandfathered), I'm amazed I can live with myself. . .

Carry on. ;-)

Mike

You poor man.....takin' it at both ends.