To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as large as necessary.

Take 2.50: To the engineer, the capacity of the container has been over designed by a factor of approximately 1.905 assuming a 5% volume for the sloshing safety factor.

From Varmint Al’s Engineering Pages

Scott Adams chimed in on this in Take 1

http://xkcd.com/c269.html

Engineers are neither optimists nor pessimists:

(more…)

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/book.djvu