Wednesday, March 02, 2005
I paid the price of "goofing-off" last weekend as I started working on the assignment from hell - Engineering Risk-Benefit Analysis (ERBA) assignment #4. With 8 hours spent sketching the product concepts for Product Design & Development
the prior night, I was further delayed in working my ERBA homework.
Furthermore, when
the best of minds in class were publicly confessing that they were
having difficulty in doing the homework, I became even more worried.
But being indoctrinated in
the values of teamwork during our SDM orientation, a few of us got
together 12 hours prior to the submission of assignment and put our
minds in solving the problem set. Thanks largely to Matt and Dave,
the collective efforts was a huge success. We completed
the entire assignment, including heinous problem #4, in 9 hours. So
far, much of my experience in team-based exercises at MIT SDM program
has been positive. I am definitely an advocate of team collaboration.
Now, let's talk ERBA. It's not surprising that
the last assignment had generated a lot of impromptu discussion among
my fellow SDM students about the class. Many voiced that there is
little practicality of the topics being taught so far and a few
insisted that the class content was poorly delivered to the students.
My argument for ERBA
has always been that the concepts taught in ERBA help
engineers/managers to make better decisions in systems applications
through the use of probability and statistics. Moreover, how can we
leave MIT without getting slaughtered by Math? But I do agree with John
who argued that the delivery of lecture and recitation has room
for improvement.
I am loving the music from Crowded House and the Finn Brothers even more now that I have been listening to their music since last weekend. Also, with ERBA assignment out of the way, I can finally watch the Daily Show tonight.