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How much math you need for programming (2014)

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Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#41

Post by WJW »

tuvistavie wrote: post #19

I think the only possible answer to how much math do you need is that it depends on what you work on. There is a lot of stuff that can be done only using very basic math, that's for sure. I would tend to agree with the article that math can be quite useful as a general mental model and can often help to find cleaner solutions to some problems. There are also a lot of applications that require some, often quite specif…

For sure. The question itself is wrong because "programming" is not a monolithic field. You'll need more math for some areas than for others.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#42

Post by ccortes »

js8 wrote: post #34

I would say computer science is useful, but as in any craft, you can get by without a theory. Confusingly, CS is considered to be a branch of mathematics, but it is still quite different from "traditional" (up to 19th century) math (linear algebra, calculus). I have a slightly different philosophical view, I consider CS to be on equal footing with most of traditional mathematics. In my view: - Traditional math (which…

>Traditional math (which came mostly out of physics and geometry) studies primarily infinite but countable structures (functions on countable sets, infinite series). The finite structures are often considered trivial, and the uncountable structures are considered to be too large to have practical importance.

I don't think this is the case at all. Basically all of calculus theory in based on uncountable structures and it's arguably the most used branch of mathematics.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#44

Post by tompazourek »

I think as a programmer you usually need to understand boolean algebra. And if you are working with some data (tracking some analytics, or measuring performance), some very basic statistics is needed as well. Otherwise I think it just depends on the domain you're programming in, I can't think of much else that would be general. Idk if you'd actually call these basics "math"...

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#45

Post by hyperpallium2 »

0

Unless you're in an area that needs math, e.g. fluid simulation, computer graphics, proving algorithms, deep learning, crypography etc.

Although there is pure mathematics, I'm not sure there is such a thing as "pure programing". It's all applied, to do something. So there's always another field required. Sometimes it's math.

There is theoretical conputer science, but (a) it's not programming and (b) is it math.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#46

Post by Garlef »

mattbit wrote: post #28

> Now what does does a mathematician do? He tries to understand nature and uses mathematics as a language to do that. I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Mathematics is about abstract ideas, which can live regardless of nature or application. Physics instead is about understanding nature. Most physicists use mathematics to do that, but that's just for practical reasons. Th…

Yep. A better version would be:

> They try to understand mathematics and use mathematics as a language to do that.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#47

Post by js8 »

ccortes wrote: post #42
js8 wrote: post #34

I would say computer science is useful, but as in any craft, you can get by without a theory. Confusingly, CS is considered to be a branch of mathematics, but it is still quite different from "traditional" (up to 19th century) math (linear algebra, calculus). I have a slightly different philosophical view, I consider CS to be on equal footing with most of traditional mathematics. In my view: - Traditional math (which…

>Traditional math (which came mostly out of physics and geometry) studies primarily infinite but countable structures (functions on countable sets, infinite series). The finite structures are often considered trivial, and the uncountable structures are considered to be too large to have practical importance. I don't think this is the case at all. Basically all of calculus theory in based on uncountable structures and…

I understand what you're saying, but disagree. In calculus, uncountable sets are just the theater, the real actors are sequences. As long as the theater is a complete metric space, we don't really care about its structure. Hence the name, it signifies that we are unconcerned with cardinality above aleph 0. The finite/countable/uncountable distinction IMHO shows where the focus is.

Analogically, in CS, you use infinite sets (integers) but you don't really care what the cardinality is. You don't care about the axiom of choice.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#48

Post by enriquto »

mattbit wrote: post #28

> Now what does does a mathematician do? He tries to understand nature and uses mathematics as a language to do that. I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Mathematics is about abstract ideas, which can live regardless of nature or application. Physics instead is about understanding nature. Most physicists use mathematics to do that, but that's just for practical reasons. Th…

> I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians.

Notice that many mathematicians would not agree with you, here (but probably, a majority would). As the mathematician V.I.Arnold famously said, "mathematics is a branch of physics where experiments are cheap". So, yes, in the minds of lots of mathematicians, what they do is precisely to study and understand nature.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#49

Post by st1x7 »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #39

As a CRUD or frontend dev you should be able to know the numbers from -100 to +100. Modulo is a bonus. Anything else is not required for the majority of programming jobs/tasks. Yet beginners getting hazed and outsiders getting scared with CS/algodat and math is essential for keeping wages up and „normies“ away.

- there is a lot more to programming than CRUD and frontend

- you're putting algorithms and data structures in the same basket as mathematics - algorithms and data strucutures are useful in pretty much any programming job including CRUD and frontend

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#50

Post by TeMPOraL »

enriquto wrote: post #48
mattbit wrote: post #28

> Now what does does a mathematician do? He tries to understand nature and uses mathematics as a language to do that. I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Mathematics is about abstract ideas, which can live regardless of nature or application. Physics instead is about understanding nature. Most physicists use mathematics to do that, but that's just for practical reasons. Th…

> I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Notice that many mathematicians would not agree with you, here (but probably, a majority would). As the mathematician V.I.Arnold famously said, "mathematics is a branch of physics where experiments are cheap". So, yes, in the minds of lots of mathematicians, what they do is precisely to study and understand nature.

In that sense, though, programming would be a branch of physics that's concerned with making brute-force experiments cheap (thus saving the mathematical work needed to find clever tricks to do that same experiment by manipulating a small bunch of symbols).
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