A review by jaytaves
Applied Minds: How Engineers Think by Guru Madhavan

1.0

I stopped reading this book halfway through, so admittedly it may have a stellar second half that I missed. This book provides little to no insight into how engineers think but is instead a collection of short anecdotes that lack any connecting theme. When discussing problems engineers have faced, the author would go into no detail about how the engineers reached their conclusions but would simply state what those conclusions were and then discuss a list of "engineering terms" vaguely related to the problem the author had just outlined. It was hard to connect the concluding discussions that followed each story because the stories were told in such little detail that it was impossible to understand the relevant issues.

Here are two quotes from the book that particularly frustrated me

"In IBM's case, the primary objective was to minimize traffic on Stockholm, which turned out to be a function of peak automobile usage"

"Further, in the name ... of not wanting to obscure the view from the deck ... the number of lifeboats on board [the Titanic] was woefully inadequate. These were ... what engineers would call aggressive trade-offs."