ESD.721 Engineering Risk Benefit Analysis

I covered the practical New Enterprises course in my last post so I'll switch gears and discuss the dreaded Engineering Risk Benefit Analysis course (unaffectionately known as ERBA) in this post. ERBA is taught by Professor George E. Apostolakis from the Nuclear Science and Engineering department and is all about statistics and mathematical models for analyzing risk. To many of my classmates' dismay, there is a fair amount of math involved. This is problematic for some (including me) because we haven't done any significant math in 5-10 years. My last math class (Calc III) was in 1997. The other reason this class is objectionable is due to its apparent lack of applied material. It is hard to go from a course like New Enterprises to ERBA where there is a good chance I'll never use the material after the class ends.

Homework assignments make up 25% of our grade and 2 quizzes make up the remaining 75%. This is the only class I'm taking that doesn't have a group project as a significant chuck of the grade. Between the material and grading system, it feels like a typical undergrad class (not to mention several undergrads are taking it!).

I don't want to say there is no place for this course in our curriculum. In fact, I'm begrudgingly glad it is there. I can see that a mechnical/aero/astro/nuclear engineer could use it. I even asked a classmate that works at GE on airplane engines and he said he uses this stuff all the time. But I work in software and at least in my experience we've never done anything related to ERBA. This is why I think it is good for me to take the class. I'm not at MIT to take courses in subjects I know everything about or that I know I'm going to use directly after I graduate. ERBA has applied uses. And who's to say we shouldn't be doing more of this in software? Also, I think ERBA addresses the bigger engineering picture. It looks at the overall system, not just a single component. If I ever design a complex system that encompasses more than just software and servers, I think I'll be glad I *had* to take this class.