Comment by Arubis
4 months ago
An unforgettable anecdote from an electrical engineering professor I had, some 20 years ago.
Engineering math works like this: if it's an order of magnitude bigger, round it to infinity. If it's an order of magnitude smaller, round it to zero.
Prior to teaching, he'd spent a career working on missile guidance systems.
It’s the same in (mathematical) physics: I routinely say something like “let’s look very far away, say z=10” to my workgroup. :P