The Use Of Common Sense Applications In Teaching Engineering Economic Analysis

Engineering economic analysis plays a vital role in nearly all decisions made by engineers. The course is very important because most topics covered in it are used everyday in both our personal and professional lives. Unfortunately, the importance of this course is greatly undermined when students have difficulties in understanding the application of economic analysis to real life economic problems. This is in part due to the fact that students typically do not have the opportunity to apply the concepts learned in the classroom to common sense applications outside of the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to present two examples of these common sense applications in detail and show how these approaches can be used in other engineering schools.