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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)

#381

Post by vidarh »

voidspark wrote: post #352
vidarh wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer science is math in the same way that physics is philosophy, in that computer science certainly started as math, just like the natural sciences used to be subdisciplines of philosophy. But it's hardly a useful grouping any more. You can study and do well in computer science with minimal knowledge of most of the core mathematical subjects. While graph theory certainly crosses over into math, you can cover most…

> You can study and do well in computer science with minimal knowledge of most of the core mathematical subjects. You will fail at Theoretical Computer Science without mathematical proficiency. Go read some textbooks and papers in theoretical CS. It is a subfield of mathematics. Theorems and proofs. Rigorous and difficult mathematics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_computer_science

I've read plenty of theoretical computer science papers over the last 30+ years, and while some of it requires "rigorous and difficult mathematics" that is by no means universal.

I wrote my MSc thesis on the use of statistical methods for reducing error rates for OCR, and most of the papers in my literature review hardly required more than basic arithmetic and algebra.

So I stand by my statement.

Sure, there are subsets of computer science where you need more maths, just like in any field there are sub fields where you will need to understand other subjects as well, but that does not alter what I claimed.

EDIT:

Some authors are quicker to pull out the maths than others, and frankly in a lot of CS papers maths is used to obscure lack of rigor rather than to provide it. E.g the problem I ran across when writing my thesis was that once you unpacked the limited math into code you'd often reveal unstated assumptions that were less than obvious if you just read their formulas.

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

#382

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

godelski wrote: post #215
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll claim that there's not real thing such as a "language brain" or "math brain. Did you even read beyond the silly headline? The article itself is about pre-testing subjects on a range of capabilities from problem solving ability to second (foreign) language learning ability, and then seeing how these correlated to the ability of the test subjects to learn to code. The results were basically exactly what might be…

> Did you even read beyond the silly headline? Yes. I'll also refer you to the HN guideline on this manner. You're welcome to disagree with me but you must communicate in good faith and unless you have a very specific reason for thinking I didn't "RTFM" then don't make the accusation. I'm happy to continue discussing, but only on those terms. In fact, I think we're in far more agreement than your tone suggests. But I…

Sheesh - why so touchy?!

Your response opened with addressing the headline, which anyone who had "RTFM" (RTFA) would have realized was unrelated to the body of the article. You then veered off into a tangent about the nature of math which again was not addressing the content of the article.

The underlying nature article, linked from the posted story, makes it even more clear what is being discussed, with the abstract stating:

> This experiment employed an individual differences approach to test the hypothesis that learning modern programming languages resembles second “natural” language learning in adulthood.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8

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

#384

Post by hansvm »

john-h-k wrote: post #363

Has anyone here actually read the paper? Heavily clickbait headline, completely exaggerating the study results, which themselves are not very rigorous (to be generous) Tiny sample size - 36 people completed Numeracy has R^2 = .27 Language has R^2 = .31 They then run stepwise regression to determine variance contributions, seemingly ignoring their earlier results, and this leads to almost no contribution from numeracy…

To be somewhat fair, their numeracy scatter plot visually looks more like a dart board than any real process. The fact that you got a positive-sloping line out at all from the regression has to do more with the positions of the outliers than anything else. You're at least able to visually examine the language aptitude plot and see an up-and-to-the right connection between the two variables.

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

#385

Post by GoblinSlayer »

willhslade wrote: post #274
voidspark wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in GNU vs. Microsoft? Or something more foundational in logic?

Classes are a platonic ideal representation of reality?

That's another gap: mathematical classes are ideal representation of fantasy, programming classes are leaky representation of reality.

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

#386

Post by GoblinSlayer »

drdeca wrote: post #283
QuercusMax wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presumably-mathematicians who wrote my Algorithms textbook (CLRS) didn't seem to think giving the variables in their algorithms useful names. They just use i, x, etc. all over the place and don't even consider giving things actual names. This makes the book much less accessible than it would be if they treated it more like most people write code.

Picking what letters to use for what things can still be a struggle. Mathematicians do have to deal with difficulties in naming things.

They just invent new characters.

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

#387

Post by john-h-k »

hansvm wrote: post #384
john-h-k wrote: post #363

Has anyone here actually read the paper? Heavily clickbait headline, completely exaggerating the study results, which themselves are not very rigorous (to be generous) Tiny sample size - 36 people completed Numeracy has R^2 = .27 Language has R^2 = .31 They then run stepwise regression to determine variance contributions, seemingly ignoring their earlier results, and this leads to almost no contribution from numeracy…

To be somewhat fair, their numeracy scatter plot visually looks more like a dart board than any real process. The fact that you got a positive-sloping line out at all from the regression has to do more with the positions of the outliers than anything else. You're at least able to visually examine the language aptitude plot and see an up-and-to-the right connection between the two variables.

I agree, but also via some napkin math, the chance of getting those different results is something like 40%.

(Ie, if you sample the same signal twice for the numbers they did in the study, there’s a 40% chance it’ll be >0.04 away from the original sample, as numeracy was from language)

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

#388

Post by owlbite »

radlad wrote: post #260
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> It's an actively stupid fiction for people who don't understand what math is. This comes off quite judgmental, and doesn't help me understand your actual point. Could you elaborate on the differences, as you see them?

Most math is more about definition, proof and structuring/relationships than about numbers. It is a bit of a joke among math students that numbers above 5 are effectively infinity, they crop up that rarely.

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

#389

Post by apeescape »

godelski wrote: post #259
apeescape wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland tried teaching maths to children using Group Theory in the 70s [1], but the results weren't that good; it proved to be too abstract for young kids. Ultimately, I believe basic algebra and geometry are the most important takeaways from math classes for most people. [1]: https://www.hs.fi/tiede/art-2000004823594.html (sorry, it's in Finnish and behind a paywall)

> the results weren't that good; it proved to be too abstract for young kids You cannot make that conclusion as a result of the evidence. Yes, the evidence might support that conclusion, but there are many others that also could. For example, they could have just been really bad at teaching. This even seems like a likely one as it is difficult to perform such a reformulation and to do so broadly and quickly. The othe…

Yeah fair point.

However, curious of what you base your claim "France and the USSR had far more success" on?

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

#390

Post by seadan83 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #376
seadan83 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The proposition was "A = B" (logical equals, A and B are entities) That's only in your head. Inventing claims so that you can pretend other people are wrong isn't a good move. > That WAS the math exam!! No group or set theory needed. It's simple and this is not interesting. I'm surprised you can pass a math class.

> That's only in your head. Inventing claims so that you can pretend other people are wrong isn't a good move.

I'm not the only one that interprets a statement as "Math is Language" to be of the form "A = B" where "math" is A, "language" is B, and "is" is the equals operator, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43874322

Seems kinda simple.. You're engaging in a almost pure personal attacks. Care to address the substance of how the 3 word long statement is not of the form "A = B", but is of some other different form? In which case, perhaps you can guide the conversation for why it is an interesting statement or not? If you want to change all the givens and use your own definitions, please provide those. Without common ground, this remains uninteresting.

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