Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

ocw.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 115 posts

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#11

Post by t8q8 »

overfl0w wrote: post #6

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it hal…

I completed an earlier version of this class and found structure to be helpful. Found consistent time and place each day to spend some time learning and that helped a ton, but still had weeks of not touching it so the struggle is real :)

A bit of a side note but I find that the lectures are not the most interesting/useful part of those courses. The problem sets and the time spent trying to solve them ended up solidifying so many ideas that I had fooled myself into believing I understood. So I highly recommend heads-down solving some problems. It sinks much more time than the lectures but you come out of it better off

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#12

Post by barrenko »

William_BB wrote: post #9
overfl0w wrote: post #6

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it hal…

In my experience, coursera/khan academy courses have never been able to compete with a rigorous university course. They're great resources when you need alternative explanations, but never stood up on their own. I think long lecture playlist is a feature, not a bug. It's much harder to commit to such material when you're not full timing education.

My 5 cents, the value of KA is that it gives you some sort of basic curriculum you can follow. To finish calculus (the "basic", single variable) I've had to pull in lots of other books, youtube channels, courses from other universities, but it still has it's worth. It's like a rope bridge over a high river.

Major weaknesses are some cool sections like Linear Algebra that have no exercises in their respective "tree", but that's very rare.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#13

Post by cubefox »

A lot of these topics sound interesting, though I think the average software engineer needs approximately none of that. When I first started programming, I was surprised how little mathematics was involved in practice.

Of course, these MIT lectures are aimed at computer scientists, not software engineers, which US universities consider to be quite different.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#14

Post by vouaobrasil »

overfl0w wrote: post #6

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it hal…

I love math, completed a PhD, and am very self-disciplined. But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start. For some reason, it seems like you need to reach a "critical mass" of knowledge first before you can do that, and I've observed that a crucial component is being in a program with others, and definitely having a very experienced mentor.

Without a very experienced mentor, I think it's very difficult to get to the independent-learning stage with math. That's the key. You need someone to go through your work, correct you, and make sure you don't go off in a very wrong direction.

So my advice is find at least a graduate student in math to help you. It's like a piano teacher, if you've ever taken piano, you know it's absolutely mandatory to have a teacher. People who self-learn from the start end up being able to play but not very well.

Edit: one other crucial component is time. If you're really interested in knowing something like linear algebra, analysis, or calculus with fluency, expect to spend at least 10 hours per week on it for a year. Two hours per week will give you a cursory and very weak understanding only.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#15

Post by ktallett »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #14
overfl0w wrote: post #6

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it hal…

I love math, completed a PhD, and am very self-disciplined. But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start. For some reason, it seems like you need to reach a "critical mass" of knowledge first before you can do that, and I've observed that a crucial component is being in a program with others, and definitely having a very experienced mentor. W…

I would say that you need to start at a lower level when self learning with a simpler resource. Something like Openstax. People get far too obsessed with the name attached to a resource than whether it is the right method of learning.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#16

Post by j7ake »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #14
overfl0w wrote: post #6

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it hal…

I love math, completed a PhD, and am very self-disciplined. But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start. For some reason, it seems like you need to reach a "critical mass" of knowledge first before you can do that, and I've observed that a crucial component is being in a program with others, and definitely having a very experienced mentor. W…

Like piano it’s important to tackle courses that are appropriate for your level

Self taught people often skip too much of the basics so they struggle to properly tackle the fancy stuff

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#18

Post by kindkang2024 »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #14
overfl0w wrote: post #6

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it hal…

I love math, completed a PhD, and am very self-disciplined. But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start. For some reason, it seems like you need to reach a "critical mass" of knowledge first before you can do that, and I've observed that a crucial component is being in a program with others, and definitely having a very experienced mentor. W…

LLM could be the teacher, one of the best already..

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#19

Post by abhink »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #14
overfl0w wrote: post #6

It's unbelievable that the average human being has access to the lectures of some of the best universities in the world for free. 31 hours of in-depth mathematics by some of the best people in their field. Although I have always been struggling with keeping up with long lecture playlists. I always try to find shorter videos which explain the concept faster (although probably lacking depth). And end up ditching it hal…

I love math, completed a PhD, and am very self-disciplined. But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start. For some reason, it seems like you need to reach a "critical mass" of knowledge first before you can do that, and I've observed that a crucial component is being in a program with others, and definitely having a very experienced mentor. W…

> But even so, I don't think I would have been able to learn much on my own with video lectures, at least not at the start.

This was exactly my situation. Videos can give you a lot of structured, well presented information. And for MIT courses you'd get this knowledge from the very best. The problem is that no matter how well the subject matter is presented, I would hit some conceptual snag that I couldn't resolve just by repeating the sections in the video.

Now, years ago, to clear up the concepts, I would go to math stack exchange, write down exactly what I wanted to understand using mathjax and hope that someone will provide a detailed enough explanation. Most of the time I did learn from the answers, but sometimes the answer would be too succinct. In such cases there would be a need for a back and forth and stackexchange is not really designed around that usage pattern. This hassle would eventually make me give up the whole endeavor.

Now however there are LLMs. They don't need mathjax to understand what I am talking about and they are pretty good at back and forth. In the past 6 months I have gone through 2 full MIT courses with practice sheets and exams.

So I would encourage anyone who went through the route of self learning via videos and found it to be too cumbersome and lacking to give it another go with your favorite LLM.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science (2024)

#20

Post by vardhanw »

fn-mote wrote: post #3

The page listing topics (just like the playlist): https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-1200j-mathematics-for-computer... Lecture notes: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-1200j-mathematics-for-computer... There are a few unusual parts, like the last lecture ("Large Deviations"). I'm not familiar with the entire course, but IMO the lecture on state machines is very good; it discusses invariants and uses an approchable example (th…

The Units seem to be independent i.e. could be followed in any order. Can someone knowledgeable confirm this? I know Set theory etc is the basis of many things usually in a formal mathematical setting, hence asking.
Post reply on HN