Sometimes It's Obvious We're Engineers

Words Oliners are more likely than other college students to use in everyday conversation

Abstraction: Life is complicated and hard to model accurately. Let's get rid of some of the finicky details; we can add them back in later if they're important.

Assumptions: What are we making simpler than reality? What aren't we making simpler? Let's make sure everyone knows, because without assumptions, there's no context. State your assumptions early and often.

Complexity: Complex things are interesting. They also tend to be messy.

Claim: If we formally state what we believe to be true, then everyone is on the same page.

Design: Before we build something or make something happen, we plan, and we think a lot about those plans.

Feedback: Something happens, and it causes a change in how it happens in the future. There are two slightly different ways we use this term, and I'm not sure which is more common. We describe the world in terms of positive and negative feedback loops We also provide and want written and verbal feedback on everything.

Model: Take the world and condense it down to something we can understand and from which we can extract information. No model is right, but some models are useful.

Oscillation: Back and forth, back and forth...

Outward-Facing: Talking to the outside world is sometimes very different than talking to each other.

Parameter: If we tweaked this one thing just a little bit...

Simulation: Let's figure out what this would be like without having to actually experience it!

Steady-State: It's useful to know when things stop changing.

System: Everything's a system, at least if we want to analyze it. Maybe we need to define a boundary to set what is the system and what isn't. Maybe we need to figure out what all the parameters are. Also, we've all taken ModSim; what are the flows in the system? Let's make a model.

User: Engineering is for people. We try not to forget that.

Validation: Always check for reasonableness. Always. Other people believe us more when our claims make sense.

Value: We create value, not stuff.