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The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

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Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#171

Post by resters »

I've noticed that the people who initially grok programming language syntax are often better at learning new symbolic systems, but I think this is actually due to a persistent type I error their brains make that is OK for early learning.

People who end up being the best programmers have a deeper appreciation for semantics and information flow, but tend to commit more type II errors early on, making them inferior intro CS students.

Much of the CS curriculum (and typically also the required maths curriculum) in universities still favors the first type of student over the second, driving out the most capable and creative minds.

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#172

Post by florbnit »

godelski wrote: post #113

It think this is silly on multiple accounts. I'll claim that there's not real thing such as a "language brain" or "math brain." I'll also claim that most people don't know what math is, and that their evidence supports a "math brain". Math isn't about calculations/computations, it is about patterns. You get to algebra and think "what are these letters doing in my math" but once you get further you think "what are the…

> It think this is silly on multiple accounts. I'll claim that there's not real thing such as a "language brain" or "math brain."

It seems plainly obvious that this language just means “areas of brain that activate when dealing with math problems” vs “areas of brain that activate when dealing with language problems” and yes there is hard evidence that there is a difference between them.

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#174

Post by waynesonfire »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #124
godelski wrote: post #113

It think this is silly on multiple accounts. I'll claim that there's not real thing such as a "language brain" or "math brain." I'll also claim that most people don't know what math is, and that their evidence supports a "math brain". Math isn't about calculations/computations, it is about patterns. You get to algebra and think "what are these letters doing in my math" but once you get further you think "what are the…

100%. I have 2 kids and what they learn at school is absurd... I have to put them in an extra class outside school where they learn a lot of the more abstract stuff, albeit as you say at a level which makes sense (not too deep).

what is the name / curriculum of such a class?

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#175

Post by Qem »

philipkglass wrote: post #7
jp57 wrote: post #3

After I started my PhD program in CS/AI (late 90's), one of the faculty told me that the GRE verbal score was thing on the application most predictive of student success in the program. Of course, most applicants had perfect or near perfect GRE math scores, so there was no predictive power there. But the application also included the GRE subject test, transcripts, and letters of recommendation.

I also seem to recall from The Making of the Atomic Bomb that the theoretical physicists of the era were noted as having the highest verbal intelligence of any group of scientists. That struck me since I would not have expected it. EDIT: I found the quote, from chapter 6: Psychometricians have closely questioned American scientists of this first modern generation, curious to know what kind of men they were—there were…

Perhaps survivorship bias explain part of it. Many of those scientists arrived at US fleeing their home countries in WWII. Migrating under those circumstances is tricky, lacking the necessary support network or failing to successfully negotiate an encounter with border patrol may be the difference between reaching a safe place and being dragged to rot in the trenches. Good verbal intelligence is very helpful in this process. Perhaps the same way good verbal intelligence is over-represented in those who escaped the war, the trait of being taciturn was over-represented in all the scientists that got stuck and died in WWII[1].

[1] https://worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/q0436#t=ab...

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#176

Post by deeThrow94 »

Jensson wrote: post #142
deeThrow94 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recursive functions are just a subset of all possibly recursive concepts. In the case of human spoken language, the recursion exists in our characterization of the grammar. You could just as easily frame this in "iterative" terms just like you can make any recursive function iterative, but that's less convenient for analysis. So in this case, "recursive function" would be "clause" or something like that; I'm no lingu…

> In the case of human spoken language, the recursion exists in our characterization of the grammar But people are constructing sentences, not grammars. When you construct a grammar you can add a recursive part to it, that is true, just like in a programming language, but constructing grammars is not what people mean with language skills. A sentence can't be recursive since languages in themselves has no concept of a…

There are two ways that recursion intersects with language that are relevant here:

1. Our spoken and especially written grammar is recursive. We do handle this unconsciously. This is not related to our ability to reason about recursion at a high level, and recursive grammars are not necessary to do so. This is not a skill in the normal sense and we have only (very) limited ability to improve our capacity to interpret deeply nested grammars. However, this is still a useful illustration of what recursion IS, which is why I brought it up.

2. Language also introduces the ability to semantically reason about recursiveness. This is still a linguistic thing—you need a symbol and relations among symbols in order for recursion to be meaningful—but this is a skill and is likely very related to linguistic skill. This is the part that really helps you to program: ultimately, you're just reasoning about symbols and looking for incoherency.

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#177

Post by bee_rider »

vendiddy wrote: post #138
godelski wrote: post #113

It think this is silly on multiple accounts. I'll claim that there's not real thing such as a "language brain" or "math brain." I'll also claim that most people don't know what math is, and that their evidence supports a "math brain". Math isn't about calculations/computations, it is about patterns. You get to algebra and think "what are these letters doing in my math" but once you get further you think "what are the…

It took me a long time to realize math consisted of abstractions. I was never told, for example, that matrices are a useful abstraction (shorthand?) for representing linear equations. Or that imaginary numbers were an invented abstraction that made certain calculations easier. It would have been nice to learn it from the perspective of how those abstractions came into being and why they're useful.

> I was never told, for example, that matrices are a useful abstraction (shorthand?) for representing linear equations.

Congratulations on overcoming the (very weird) choice of whoever taught your intro to linear algebra class.

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#178

Post by randerson »

As an accomplished programmer who is not great at language nor math, I feel like my "modeling brain" is the key to success. I can envision all the aspects of an architecture, its data shapes and program flow, making it obvious which data structures and algorithms to use, or where to look for a bug. I did spend a lot of time naming things though... until ChatGPT replaced the need for a thesaurus.

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#179

Post by jeffhuys »

godelski wrote: post #113

It think this is silly on multiple accounts. I'll claim that there's not real thing such as a "language brain" or "math brain." I'll also claim that most people don't know what math is, and that their evidence supports a "math brain". Math isn't about calculations/computations, it is about patterns. You get to algebra and think "what are these letters doing in my math" but once you get further you think "what are the…

Interesting to me how Wernicke’s Aphasia works then (which I have occasionally; my epilepsy stems from there + broca’s area). Could you explain that?

Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)

#180

Post by atomicnumber3 »

godelski wrote: post #113

It think this is silly on multiple accounts. I'll claim that there's not real thing such as a "language brain" or "math brain." I'll also claim that most people don't know what math is, and that their evidence supports a "math brain". Math isn't about calculations/computations, it is about patterns. You get to algebra and think "what are these letters doing in my math" but once you get further you think "what are the…

Just anecdotally based on my 2000something kid high school, the copious amount of tiering of math classes seemed to indicate to me that either we're really bad at teaching math to 80% of people, or only 20% of people will be able to handle precalculus.

We had basically 4 tracks: one ended with you doing algebra 1 in senior year, another ended with you doing trig in sr year, yet another that ended with trig (no precalculus), and then one that ended with you doing trig and precalc. That final class then had further subdivisions that were too small to have their own full classes: some kids just did precalc, some did calc 1 and took the AP Calculus AB exam and/or IB Math SL, while even even smaller group took AP Calculus BC and/or IB Math HL. The total number of kids who took the AP Calc AB exam in my year was 20ish, out of a graduating class of 500-600.

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