How much math you need for programming (2014) • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ajarmst » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

jkaptur wrote: post #125

ajarmst wrote: post #124

As usual, the answer to the eternal question of “how much formal math training do you need for X” turns out to be “right around the amount the author of the argument has had.” Why is it that we always have to prove the instrumental value of maths education? You’re a lot more likely to “need” your maths in the “real world” than your Shakespeare, but few have much energy for fighting the idea that literature should be…

I agree with everything you’ve said, but I want to push back on the (non-load-bearing) “few have much energy for fighting the idea that literature should be studied for it’s own sake.” It seems to me that lots of people have endless energy for this fight, unfortunately.

It’s possible that the sample set of anecdotes I base this on is a bit skewed, as I teach undergraduate maths. In my limited experience I had to put a lot more effort into keeping basic differential calculus in the required freshman curriculum than my colleagues from the English department had to keep the %#^* five-paragraph essay. (Full disclosure, I’ve also taught our “Communications” course because of a misspent youth in an Arts program and work as a technical writer, and my colleagues from the English department supported me in killing the Essay Writing part of the course—-the fight was with government and industry reps who’d swallowed the “soft-skills” pill.)

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

#132

Post by shepherdjerred » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

I work at AWS. The highest level math course I've taken is College Algebra.

I wish I had taken more math courses and now I'm seeking to learn on my own or possibly taking classes.

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

#133

Post by jariel » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

The Math proponents here I think should accept that it's a little more 'domain knowledge' as opposed to inherently part of the craft, which is I think the point of the article.

'Musical theory' background probably correlates pretty well with 'good programmer' in my completely unscientific guess, though it's obviously not remotely a requirement.

'Building' however, is quite fundamentally different from 'theory'.

Do you remember the supposedly 'not so bright kids' who went to work in 'shop class' because they liked 'working with stuff' and not 'stuff in books'? I don't they were so dumb.

The process of 'making' engages us on an entirely different level than intellectualizing, and I think really differentiates the discipline. There are many bits of software that we use daily, not made by 'genius' but rather the sweat and effort of 'some guy who did it, mostly because it worked'.

You don't need any maths, but it's probably a good sign if you do.

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

#134

Post by kayodelycaon » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #24

You need all the math for the domain. If you are in engineering, games, DSP, ML, then that can be a lot . At the same time some developers can go a whole career without ever (knowingly) using a floating point number. They work with web sites/services/databases/apis etc. But developers should at least know basic calculus, logic, and what what you need to grok basic algorithms and data structures. That part of math isn…

Programming is nothing more than a list of instructions. Understanding data structures doesn’t require math, just logic. Maybe some mathematical operations can be derived from observation but the numbers behind it don’t really need to be known.

I’ve never been able to grasp mathematics as numbers. My ability to work with numbers is severely compromised by my disability. This hasn’t hurt my ability to excel as a web developer. In fact, while I can’t visualize individual formulas or algorithms, I can visualize very complicated applications. And I likely know what types of algorithms and data structures would be likely be optimal.

Even if I don’t know the “correct” math, I know where to look for it.

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

#135

Post by Jtsummers » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

kayodelycaon wrote: post #134

alkonaut wrote: post #24

You need all the math for the domain. If you are in engineering, games, DSP, ML, then that can be a lot . At the same time some developers can go a whole career without ever (knowingly) using a floating point number. They work with web sites/services/databases/apis etc. But developers should at least know basic calculus, logic, and what what you need to grok basic algorithms and data structures. That part of math isn…

Programming is nothing more than a list of instructions. Understanding data structures doesn’t require math, just logic. Maybe some mathematical operations can be derived from observation but the numbers behind it don’t really need to be known. I’ve never been able to grasp mathematics as numbers. My ability to work with numbers is severely compromised by my disability. This hasn’t hurt my ability to excel as a web d…

> Programming is nothing more than a list of instructions.

That’s not true for every language paradigm.

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

#136

Post by agensaequivocum » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

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. Mathematics is about abstract ideas, which can live regardless of nature or application. Physics instead is about understanding nature.

I would disagree. They both are the study of nature just different aspects of it. Mathematics is the study of the some of the more universal formal causes, while Physics also involves the particular material causes.

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

#137

Post by geniium » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

Spoiler alert: not so much.

It’s probably better to be well organized and a bit of a cleaning maniac to keep your code clean and easy to maintain.

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

#138

Post by dlubarov » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #107

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still fail to see how calculus relates to programming for what most people do. Web or not.

Simple example: monitoring your systems when data only increases, like number of hits to your site or queries to the db. That graph is always up and to the right. However, if you look at the rate of change (cough, derivative/calculus), the graph now tells you interesting things. Granted, the calculus understanding there is superficial, but it is there!

We can talk about those things without the language of calculus, though: "this graph shows requests per second, and that graph shows cumulative requests." And I think it should be clear how to derive one graph from the other, with or without calculus training.

IMX numerical integration is useful in some areas (like physics simulations), but I haven't encountered any non-trivial applications of the kind of calculus that's taught in most schools, which focuses on continuous functions over the reals.

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

#139

Post by guenthert » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

kovac wrote: post #84

mkl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a mathematician. Nature is of no consideration whatsoever in some fields of maths. But nature or applications to it are the primary focus in many other fields of maths. In still others, nature would be a source of analogies, or applications of a few special cases, etc. Muddying the waters, some mathematicians would expand the definition of "nature" to include completely abstract ideas - anything that feels "disc…

Whatever people may think what mathematicians think, this comment describes the real situation best as I've experienced it. Most pure mathematicians I've met/worked with actually look down (in a jocular way) on applied mathematics/physics. When Lagrange reformulated Newtonian physics, he was very proud of the fact that he didn't use any diagrams and arrows showing forces in his paper. In fact, of all the Physics I've…

https://xkcd.com/435/

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

#140

Post by guenthert » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #78

When working with CSS/design I used subtraction, multiplication and division. When working with e-commerce/finance I used algebra. When making a 2d game I used geometry. When making a 3d engine I needed to learn about vector, matrices, etc. When working with weather forecasting there where formulas involving sin,cos,atan etc. So while you do not need math to get started in programming/development, you will definitely…

Reminds me of a buddy of mine working on a computer game. Gravity needed to be simulated -- easy enough, the formula is as basic as it gets. Results looked wrong to him though and he ended up using some trigonometric function instead ;-}