I was dazed when an interviewer asked this question at an interview I attended some days back. I did flop, I knew. So, I posted this discussion on a Nigerian engineers forum and was dazed by some mind blowing responses I got. In two sentences, you tell why Engineers study dy/dx. You may want to see answers to this question proffered by practicing engineers http://go.engineer-ng.net/forum/topics/why-do-nigeria-engineers-study-dy-dx-nigeria-engineering?xg_source=activity. Drop your response on this thread and maybe there.

I'm not an Engineer, i am a Statistician. In statistics it enables you to know or study the rate of change of variables or quantities compared with other variables or quantities. I believe it is the same for Engineering.

ishmael: I'm not an Engineer, i am a Statistician. In statistics it enables you to know or study the rate of change of variables or quantities compared with other variables or quantities. I believe it is the same for Engineering.

Right.
To determine the change in a variable with respect to the other variable.

Dy/dx (differential calculus)...is a branch of math that studies how one variable changes w.r.t another...it has vast appl in engineering e.g in a problem invovling finding the cetriod of a large irregular suface or the effect of wind on the entire span of a suspension bridge, u could easily pick a differential element(infinitesimal portion) of the large surface/bridge span...then you could easily solve this problem for d infinitesimal portion (dy/dy)...the solution could then be integrated to get the solution for the entire material...
Often, the equations that are use to solve the differential element(infinitesimal portion) of the problem are called models and are therefore used to predict/study relationships; over larger areas, over larger period of time, etc...and thus u have the popular "modelling" term used in engineering.

I hope I'm right...lol

oremisussan: I was dazed when an interviewer asked this question at an interview I attended some days back. I did flop, I knew. So, I posted this discussion on a Nigerian engineers forum and was dazed by some mind blowing responses I got. In two sentences, you tell why Engineers study dy/dx. You may want to see answers to this question proffered by practicing engineers http://go.engineer-ng.net/forum/topics/why-do-nigeria-engineers-study-dy-dx-nigeria-engineering?xg_source=activity. Drop your response on this thread and maybe there.

Engineers study dy/dx so dat if they encounter a problem when anaslysing a physical situation (material), they could analyse a portion (infinitesimal) and integrate to get the characteristic behaviour of the whole

OP is obviously trying to draw traffic to his blog. SMH.