a) What is a “white paper” or “white paper solution”? I WAG it is an informal calculation to assess a situation, for example, before drafting up a formal calculation document.
b) What are “first principles”? I guess they are the basics or primary calcs which form the foundation for a larger calc?
I have never heard these terms before until recently.
Thanks,
IME, white papers are the “official” documents explaining how a technology works. They’re not as detailed as the technical specs, but they’ll tell you exactly what sort of beast you’re dealing with.
First principles are exactly that. Working from first principles involves ignoring other results and just starting from the basics.
I’ve been in the ME field for 12 years now…worked from some big names running calcs for those in various avenues of the ME arena. You’d think I would have heard of these terms somewhere down the line. Amazing! - Jinx
If you want to do engineering from first principles, you have a long road in front of you. I think it’s more of a science/math thing.
White papers may be a recent idea. I’ve never seen them for anything older than about ten years, although my experience is very limited. First principles are more of a math/science thing, but there’s no reason why they can’t show up in engineering too.
I’ve seen several documents from widely different origins over the last decade that called themselves White Papers, all relating to computer stuff or electronics.
They seem to be written at such a level as to include a much wider audience than just engineers and tech people. Much like an executive summary that might also be used by the people in sales and marketing.
There may be other uses for the term “white paper”, but in my experience it is a technical explaination of a product or process. Something that has more detail than a typical sales/marketing document, but less than a design doc or research paper. White papers are often used by marketing people or engineers to quickly explain things that may be new concepts or require some amount of detail. They may include and executive summary in their introduction, but generally have more meat than fluff. There are at least three types:
Performance papers - Reviews benchmarks and such showing why product x performs better than product y and in what circumstances.
Technology papers - Explains how new protocols or technologies work on a higher level so it can be understood why they are beneficial or significant.
Solution papers - Describes how product x can be used to solve problem y.
If someone was talking about a white paper solution, I would believe that they would be referring to a predefined or “best practices” solution. As honkytonkwillie notes, I can only apply this to the business of computers and software–I have only rarely seen white papers outside of that arena.
As a side note, some people refer to research papers as “white papers” in which case they would be referring to an academic solution which may not be applicable to the real world.
This might be contrasted to blueprints or other plans drawn on grids or graph paper (non-white paper) that are meant for technical eyes only.
First Principles: Using the basic principles of engineering/science to solve a problem. IMHO this is the best way to approach any engineering problem, and it is how i was taught at university. If you have a good understanding of the basic principles in the various fields, like: Dynamics, Kinematics, Hydrodynamics, Thermodynamics, Electronics, Metallurgy, Physics, Chemisty, Process Controls, Mass Transfer, Energy Transfer, Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics, etc, etc you can work and solve most problems from the ground up. In my work I use all of the above fields and many more on a daily basis. If I didn’t work from first principles, I wouldn’t solve anything.
I wish more Engineering schools taught this approach. Nowadays, I see a lot of young engineers who are used to having the exact formula or approach given to them and this hurts them in the long run. I end up reteaching them how to think and approach problems all too often.
My post-doc advisor used to use colored-paper terms for stuff around the labs. Apparently in the olden days (i.e. before me) NASA used color to denote the audience and clearance of the document. A white paper could be released. A pink document was not cleared for release outside the project team (drafts, tech specs, etc.). A blue document meant something else. That may be the origin of the term, but like most of my post-doc, the details are fuzzy. As far as meaning, ultrafilter hit it.
As mythil says, first principles are very important in engineering. I can look up the stream function equations in fluid dynamics, but if I use them I’d better fully understand where they came from and all the assumptions that are implicit in their derivation. On the other hand, if I start with a first priciple like conservation of momentum and derive the Navier-Stokes equations from that, I know where every term came from and I can drop terms which are negligible for my specific application. I don’t suggest doing it for every problem, but doing it for a new class of problems gives you insight into what the fundamental issues are.
The term white paper is used in fields other than computing or even engineering. It’s also used for statements by an organization explaining their policy on some issue. IIRC, the document that the British drew up explainig their plans for what is now Israel was called a white paper.
I’ve written my share of “white papers.” I characterize them as such: