61–70 of 165 posts
Programming is recipes for a computer to follow. In many cases there is Zero math involved. You can write plenty of Data Entry code and never use a single numeric function.
Conversely you could write a single line of code that required all the math skills of a Quantum Physics Doctorate.
Programming is not "math" it is recipe authoring. It is more analogous to home ec than Dif-e-q
Disclosure: I am a mathematics teacher. (I teach prealgebra to elementary-age pupils.) I am NOT a programmer. But I think the correct answer to the question is "it depends." In other words, even though you have specified a level of programming, "bog standard, journeymen, CRUD programming in Objective-C," and even though you have laid out the usual progression through the usual school mathematics topics in the English…
> In the countries that excel over the United States in mathematics instruction, proof is part of every mathematics course, not just part of geometry, for example. Can you expand on that? What do students do in other mathematical areas if they don't do proofs? I did all of my studies in France and I don't how much of a difference there is (though all my friends who have studied both in the US and in France found the…
The structure of formal proofs is taught in geometry. That's pretty much the only course where students are expected to prove theorems about the subject via proofs. In most of the other courses students are taught the formulas and techniques, axioms and theorems, but then apply them, rather than attempt to develop or prove them themselves. They're also, typically, not shown a proof of the theorems they learn, they're just told to accept them.
Math doesn't come in levels. It only seems linear because it's taught that way. You can teach kids group theory before calculus without a hitch.
Yeah, I was surprised by the framing of the question. Math is not a set of levels, it's a set of tools that are each useful in certain situations, many of which build upon each other. The branches of math that are most useful in programming are set theory, logic, linear algebra, and statistics, and most of them don't even appear in the U.S. high school math curriculum. I still remember getting to college thinking I w…
I don't remember feeling too challenged when I learned algebra. It wasn't until I got to trig and calculus that I really started having to stop and think hard.
As for my career, I've turned out to be an above average programmer but not superstar level. And I haven't lucked into any big dot-com jackpots, though I've tried.
So in my opinion, your son is probably smart and could do well, especially if he learns how to stay focused. But I don't think his programming at 11 is necessarily proof that he is a genius or anything like that.
What type of programming, what paradigm, at what scale, and dozens of other questions... I can think of numerous areas where each of these is not only "analogous", but directly used. - Want to even think of committing to scalaz/haskell? Category theory and lambda calculus. - Want to develop a physics engine for a modern 3d shooter? Geometry, trig, single/mutli-variable calc, algebra, and differential equations. - Wan…
If you voted you don't understand math or programming. Programming is recipes for a computer to follow. In many cases there is Zero math involved. You can write plenty of Data Entry code and never use a single numeric function. Conversely you could write a single line of code that required all the math skills of a Quantum Physics Doctorate. Programming is not "math" it is recipe authoring. It is more analogous to hom…
Numbers are not math.
(Anyway, I agree that the poll is strange.)
Programming isn't analogous to math, programming is a communication language with really strict rules that uses math of all stages. Different tasks involve different math. I'll give some common examples for laymen, but they may seem obvious in hindsight: Programming a very rudimentary "snake" computer game is [using] using Algebra. If your son (or anyone) understands variables, assignment and adding them together, th…
In one sense, programming often uses math. And math often uses programming. But, in a deeper sense, programming is math and math is programming. They're just different views on the same underlying ideas. They're different fields of study mainly because the priorities are so different.
Of course, this doesn't mean it makes sense to map Objective-C programming onto some "level" of math. For one, the whole math scale is completely arbitrary--who is to say that abstract algebra is more advanced than calculus? They're orthogonal. Moreover, Objective-C is in a part of programming which has really, really different priorities from normal mathematics. I still maintain that they're fundamentally related, but you're doing such different things that there's very little practical overlap. Certainly not enough to translate to some common sub-field of mathematics, much less one taught to high-schoolers!
Wait that makes absolutely zero sense!
Similarly, "pre"-calculus. It came before calculus. Does that then include the ability to tie my shoes? I learned it before calculus.
When I took math classes in college it all made more sense. OK, you have course sequences, where you look at one thing one semester, another thing the next. But that was always a recommendation; you could take them out of their numbered order. And usually the title of the class was a topic, not just a number.