Part of me wants to help solve problems, and part of me wants to to keep the site focused on useful questions and answers.

###Background My day job is an Engineer (in the strict sense of the term). I went to school and had a lot of engineering courses. I have notes from those classes. Whenever I have had "real engineering problems", my notes are practically useless. This quickly showed me that the most useful part of class was getting the ideas right and less getting the math right.

###Check My Work The types of questions that we are discussing are mostly useless to anyone other than the asker. These are also the types of questions that are best answered by TAs or during office hours.

I would like to take the middle ground (similar to Air's answer) and say, "Answer the question, then later close it since it is no longer useful." The problem is that to take that logic to the end result, you then have to ask yourself why would you spend time on something that is later going to be closed/removed.

###Lasting Value As long as a question has lasting value, it should stay. To define this term, it has to be more about theory or practice and less about math.

Not understanding something is OK. Not doing the math correctly is not OK.

Questions about understanding why the math is not OK is probably OK.

Part of me wants to help solve problems, and part of me wants to to keep the site focused on useful questions and answers.

Background

My day job is an Engineer (in the strict sense of the term). I went to school and had a lot of engineering courses. I have notes from those classes. Whenever I have had "real engineering problems", my notes are practically useless. This quickly showed me that the most useful part of class was getting the ideas right and less getting the math right.

Check My Work

The types of questions that we are discussing are mostly useless to anyone other than the asker. These are also the types of questions that are best answered by TAs or during office hours.

I would like to take the middle ground (similar to Air's answer) and say, "Answer the question, then later close it since it is no longer useful." The problem is that to take that logic to the end result, you then have to ask yourself why would you spend time on something that is later going to be closed/removed.

Lasting Value

As long as a question has lasting value, it should stay. To define this term, it has to be more about theory or practice and less about math.

Not understanding something is OK. Not doing the math correctly is not OK.

Questions about understanding why the math is not OK is probably OK.