Entered on 2002-01-23 at 10:48 a.m..
Crunch Time
Ok, I've got until 8:30 tomorrow morning to lay out a reasonable plan for my research (read thesis). The good news is that I have a nice topic and a 3 point statement of work courtesy of Boeing to work off of. The bad news is that in the one page out-line of their research idea used the words:
Trajectory
Prediction
Uncertainty
Aircraft
Flightpath
in just about every conceivable combination. It has gotten to the point where I sit there staring at Trajectory Uncertainty Modelling thinking to myself, "what does that mean? and is that any different than Flightpath Prediction Uncertainty? Or how about Aircraft Trajectory Prediction This is a classic case of engineers abusing the english language. Of course if we were german we'd abuse it even more because each of the above highlighted phrases would all be rolled into one long word. Upon encoutering such a word in print your eyes just glaze over for an isntant, and then move on to the next word.
The good news is that in my desperate attempt to come up with 1)research objectives and 2)a crude plan to meet those objectives, I have created an acronym. To all you people with anykind of military/scientific/engineering background, you know that the true measure of research is how many new acronyms it spawns. Mine is Aircraft Trajectory Prediction Algorithm. Mostly this acronym spawning frenzy stems from the abuse of the English language as mentioned above, and an attempt by other engineers to make it easier to glaze over the vague language.
OK tea time, I'll be back at this after class and after lunch.