A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#1

Post by hecubus » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 9:46 AM UTC

A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
medium.com

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#2

Post by sonabinu » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:12 AM UTC

Awesome! My personal experience has been that it is a lonely road but a worthwhile journey.

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#3

Post by bndr » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:27 AM UTC

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. The way this word is being used in Software ist kind of strange. "I built a blog in php, I'm a Software Engineer" - this feels kind of awkward to me.

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#4

Post by uncultured » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:32 AM UTC

bndr wrote: post #3

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. The way this word is being used in Software ist kind of strange. "I built a blog in php, I'm a Software Engineer" - this feels kind of awkward to me.

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics.

Not really. Mostly just algorithms and procedures of some math concepts(Calculus and Linear Algebra) which roughly corresponds to the first year of North American math major.

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#5

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:36 AM UTC

uncultured wrote: post #4

bndr wrote: post #3

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. The way this word is being used in Software ist kind of strange. "I built a blog in php, I'm a Software Engineer" - this feels kind of awkward to me.

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. Not really. Mostly just algorithms and procedures of some math concepts(Calculus and Linear Algebra) which roughly corresponds to the first year of North American math major.

Uhhh... a rigorous Computer Science program usually stops one course short of a math minor.

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#6

Post by nadam » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:39 AM UTC

Well written, this resonated with me. My day job is a software engineer. At night I have started to build a speech synthesizer. I had some math knowledge before, but I need to constantly improve it. (in the territory of signal processing and everything machine learning related.)

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#7

Post by sz4kerto » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:39 AM UTC

bndr wrote: post #3

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. The way this word is being used in Software ist kind of strange. "I built a blog in php, I'm a Software Engineer" - this feels kind of awkward to me.

Most of us (engineers of any kind) learn quite lot of maths during uni, and most of us forget 90% of that as it's not needed in most jobs, which is a shame.

The thing I have needed all the time is statistics and prob. theory, that keeps coming up literally everywhere. Calculus - not so much. If you need something, you can always re-learn it quickly. (For example, I learned quite a lot of linear algebra, but haven't used it for ~10 years, so when I had to write some 3D gfx/shader code, I had to spend like two days on quaternions, etc.)

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#8

Post by bndr » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:39 AM UTC

uncultured wrote: post #4

bndr wrote: post #3

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. The way this word is being used in Software ist kind of strange. "I built a blog in php, I'm a Software Engineer" - this feels kind of awkward to me.

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. Not really. Mostly just algorithms and procedures of some math concepts(Calculus and Linear Algebra) which roughly corresponds to the first year of North American math major.

I would disagree, Calculus and Linear Algebra ist only the first semester usually, then it gets harder (Analysis, Statistics, Crypto)

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#9

Post by andyjohnson0 » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:43 AM UTC

A related "Ask HN" from a couple of months ago: How or where to begin learning mathematics from first principles? [1]

I'm at the very start of what I hope might be a similar journey, and have signed-up for a Coursera "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" course. I'm hoping it might give me some insight to build on. The course starts in about ten days, so apprehension hasn't kicked-in yet.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8697772

[2] https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink

Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

#10

Post by uncultured » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 10:54 AM UTC

bndr wrote: post #8

uncultured wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. Not really. Mostly just algorithms and procedures of some math concepts(Calculus and Linear Algebra) which roughly corresponds to the first year of North American math major.

I would disagree, Calculus and Linear Algebra ist only the first semester usually, then it gets harder (Analysis, Statistics, Crypto)

I was actually being cautious. American colleges like to make sure you pay for as many BS courses as possible. Calculus 1, Calculus 2, Calculus 3...

Besides, I never heard of math majors taking cryptography that early. Usually, Intro to Real Analysis, Abstract Algebra and Abstract Linear Algebra come first.