About the continuous Fourier Transform

[victorvbc]

(12-15-2020 01:47 AM)medwatt Wrote:  I did a Control Engineering exam based on State Space approach and controller design and not even a pocket calculator was allowed. We had to invert and find the eigenvalues/vectors by hand. Granted, none of the matrices were more than 3x3, but what's the point of asking anyone to do a 4x4 matrix ? In fact, calculators are not allowed in most exams here (Germany).

Some teachers don't allow these calculators here as well, especially because people can put pdfs in the calculators and cheat in the tests, but that's mostly on introductory subjects. In subjects like Calculus, Linear Algebra or Physics we aren't even allowed a pocket calculator either. But since I do a whole course based on controls, we see some advanced subjects in the last years, like system order reduction techniques, robust control, nonlinear control, robust stability analysis, etc. And those might require some computational power to be avaliable in the tests, if it's not just written theory questions. Also we have a specific teacher that likes to put high order systems in the problems just because, so his class essentially requires us to have a powerful calculator. The course has some spare HP 50g's to lend for students that can't afford one.

I should've made it explicit that what I had said doesn't necessarily apply to all engineering courses here, but I'd say we don't have such a strict policy against calculators in general, too.