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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)

#321

Post by deeThrow94 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #71
retrac wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language has an inherently recursive structure: I saw the man who saw the man who saw the man who saw the man who saw the man who... While our brains have practical limits to how deeply such things can actually be nested, language has a recursive tree-like aspect to it.

Yes, but “language is fundamentally recursive” doesn’t mean the same thing as “recursion is fundamentally linguistic”. Language is just one example of a recursive structure.

Can you come up with some conception of recursion that doesn't involve symbols referring to themselves, directly or indirectly? Ie what is left of recursion when you remove the linguistic component?

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

#322

Post by voidspark »

leptons wrote: post #318
voidspark wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that code is a series of logical statements and expressions. Mathematical logic. But the CRUD logic is so basic and boring, so obvious, that it doesn't require any thought.

>All of that code is a series of logical statements and expressions. Mathematical logic. Which code? The machine code that underlies everything? Or the lines of simple high-level CRUD that don't even need a single number or logic statement to function? Not all programming has to be mathematical or even logical at a high enough level, and I say this as someone who's been coding assembly language for 40 years.

> Or the lines of simple high-level CRUD that don't even need a single number or logic statement to function?

Those lines ARE mathematical logical statements.

Each line defines logical operations that are executed by the computer.

Same for high level or low level programming. It's all logic.

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

#323

Post by voidhorse »

Abstraction is a huge factor in this too. Language may be dominant because we are at a stage in which the vast majority of programming is little more than hooking together tidy abstractions that are already highly optimized and predominantly organized linguistically.

It you ever need to get into the guts of a system or need to solve bleeding edge problems for which good abstractions don't yet exist, the "math brain" becomes significantly more relevant.

I say this as someone who studied literature and philosophy. The majority of what I know about programming and software engineering I either taught myself or learned from the tutelage of others on the job. Early on in my career, a solid mathematics background was, indeed, not that relevant. These days, though, I'd be lost without it. Whether you like it or not, when it comes to doing real engineering you necessarily need to establish bounds and prove things about those bounds and typically you'll need to do this numerically or at the very least using inductive structures. Linguistic aptitude is still relevant, but it helps less in these cases.

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

#324

Post by voidhorse »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #141
reverendsteveii wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dyscalculia, dysgraphia and dyslexia can all present independent of one another, heavily implying that different processes govern math, reading and writing. To call them "language brain" and "math brain" is simply a useful fiction, whether they're actually separate piles of meat is irrelevant.

math != calculation. It's an actively stupid fiction for people who don't understand what math is.

This. And we do a huge disservice to tons of people by basically instilling the opposite idea. So many of the people I know that either claim they are "not math people" or who claim they "dislike math" say this because they were subject to nothing but tedious calculation in school and were never show the logical, conceptual, and actually interesting parts of mathematics. I despised math until I read Frege's foundations of arithmetic in college since it was the first time I ever had someone actually show the point and make it interesting.

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

#325

Post by voidspark »

leptons wrote: post #317
godelski wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't take math to perform CRUD operation Yes it does. Just because the objects you are working with aren't numbers doesn't mean it isn't math. In fact, that's my entire point. It is why I quoted Poincare in the first place. He didn't say "numbers" he said "objects".

Sorry but you are wrong. "CREATE, READ, UPDATE, DELETE" operations are not mathematical in nature. It doesn't matter what the data is or how esoteric you want to get with it - a programmer doesn't need any math at all for simple CRUD. You're trying to move the goalposts all the way back to the 1800s to win a pointless internet argument.

CREATE, READ, UPDATE, DELETE are fundamentally mathematical in nature.

In a typical implementation these are database operations. That involves relational algebra operations, state transitions, boolean logic.

The READ part can be a very complex SQL query (composed of many algebraic operations) but even the simplest query (SELECT * from t where ID = 1) is filtering a set based on a predicate. That is mathematics.

No one is moving goalposts. Set theory and logic are at the foundations of mathematics.

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

#326

Post by sota_pop »

As others have commented, I believe strongly that to define “language brain” and “math brain” is a false dichotomy and bunk neuroscience. Mathematics IS a language in itself; a collection of symbols created to express concepts. This study works really hard to make a statement that most people already know: anyone can be a good programmer, mathematician, “whatever” if they have the interest, drive, and opportunity to do it.

An interesting book that illustrates the evolving societal perception of mathematicians (and by extension, computer scientists) over time is “Duel at Dawn”. The modern (sic recent) notion is the reclusive genius (maybe even suggestion of autism) who possesses the alien, superhuman, unattainable, too-cool-for-you ability to process numbers and information that you can only be born with. (Those familiar with the TV show “the big bang theory” would recognize the trope of the “Sheldon Cooper” character.) This is False.

The reality is that no one is born with the super-human ability to do anything - anyone who is very good at something has worked very hard to get good at that thing regardless of the perception.

edit: my initial criticism of “the study” was based upon the article. On a skim of the actual cited paper, I revised my specific criticism, but the actual paper still comes off as no more than a mild eugenics argument dressed in psychology and statistics jargon.

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

#327

Post by delecti »

Someone1234 wrote: post #83
QuercusMax wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most coding doesn't need much of any math past boolean logic and very basic set operations. I'm much more likely to spend my time studying DB and interface schemas to understand how something works than doing a lot of mathy fiddling. Sure, some people write game engines and such, but even much of 3D graphics doesn't need anything more complicated than the first half of a linear algebra course.

Now we're getting into the "define maths" part of the discussion which is always where these discussions die. It can be argued that turning a kettle on and boiling some water is "maths" or it can be as narrow as "everything above basic arithmetic is logic, not maths." So how much of programming is maths? Before we answer that, let's answer: How much of maths is actually maths? Because first we define maths, and then…

I think for this discussion, "math is stuff you'd learn in a math department" is a pretty useful definition, even if it's not a very good one. There's a lot of math involved in the design and manufacture of the kettle, electrical grid, and water utilities, but a person's ability to put a kettle on isn't going to be improved by math classes. In that way, programming probably is a bit mathy, but good programming is more like good technical writing than it is like math.

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

#328

Post by LegionMammal978 »

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…

By the very expansive definition that you advocate for, what exactly do we do that isn't math?

One could argue that all we do is turn thoughts, senses, and memories into further thoughts and appropriate actions, which is applying a pattern, which is math. But at that point the definition is too broad to be helpful for anything but playing word games.

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

#329

Post by tbrownaw »

switchbak wrote: post #121
QuercusMax wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most coding doesn't need much of any math past boolean logic and very basic set operations. I'm much more likely to spend my time studying DB and interface schemas to understand how something works than doing a lot of mathy fiddling. Sure, some people write game engines and such, but even much of 3D graphics doesn't need anything more complicated than the first half of a linear algebra course.

It's definitely a gray area. Is a DAG traversal algo "math", or is it more computer-sciencey? What if you do it in SQL? Certainly there's a mix of more or less concentrated logic/math vs glue code, and most of that is very dependent on the domain you're working in. I find this distinction useful in the abstract, that one can engage different parts of the brain for different components of development. This probably ex…

> Is a DAG traversal algo "math", or is it more computer-sciencey?

Firstly, computer science is math.

Secondly, I remember covering graphs in a discrete math course back when I was in college.

> What if you do it in SQL?

SQL is more-or-less a poor implementation of relational algebra. Ie, math.

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

#330

Post by seadan83 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #313
seadan83 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "is", typically refers to the logical equals operator (written as "="). Let A = Math, and let B = Language, the phrase "Math is Language" is therefore "A = B". My claim is that "B != A", which implies "A != B" because "!=" is reflexive. "A != B" then contradicts the claim "A = B". In words: because "language is not math", therefore it cannot be true that "math is language". This is not number theory, not set…

> This is not number theory, not set theory, just logic. Try that in a philosophy class and you can expect an F. A math class too.

The proposition was "A = B" (logical equals, A and B are entities)

The simple refutation was: because B != A, therefore A != B

That WAS the math exam!! No group or set theory needed. It's simple and this is not interesting.

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