Well, I'm currently in my masters in electrical engineering in Germany and we are taught the same stuff. We even have a mandatory course about basic numerical algorithms.
What exactly I can do with that I don't know
What exactly I can do with that I don't know
It is unlikely you are going to use the Gauss-Jordan method (if you find a linear problem of huge size, you are just going to plug it into Matlab or whatever) and it does really not give you any information on the problem.
On the other hand, eigenvectors (and the principal components theorem) do give you an idea.
I reckon (as of now) that Theory is much more important than methods: these are going to become obsolete very fast, whereas the geometric/qualitative/quantitative insights of theoretical results are what give you understanding.
Thanks for the feedback.
It depends on your viewpoint. Are you going to be the user who calls the MATLAB function, or the engineer who implements a specific iterative method, optimizes it for new hardware, and so on?
I am trying to make the jump into the second category.
Hope you make the jump to that job, which is surely interesting (and pretty hard).
Thanks.
99% of engineers will be in the former.
Of the remaining 1% who would like to be the ones implementing this stuff, about 90% will not get the job that lets them do it.
Of those who do get that job, likely over 50% of them will hate it.
Speaking as one who's been through all of this.