391–400 of 465 posts
Although the study by Prat et al. (2020) suggests that linguistic aptitude is a better predictor than numeracy for learning programming in Python, it should be read carefully, as it can easily be oversimplified. To begin with, the study measures functional numeracy: the ability to solve everyday numerical problems. This is quite different from the kind of advanced mathematics often associated with programming, such a…
This reads like an LLM wrote it.
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> 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.
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…
I agree is not a useful grouping in practice. I'm just interested in what makes you think like you do.
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The word "is", maps to the logical "equals" operator. I agree with the example, but I don't agree it is relevant. There is no implies operator. The statement "Math is Language", where A is Math and B is Language, maps to the logical assertion: "A = B". If we are going to really be kinda twisty and non-standard, we could interpret the english "is" to be "is an equivalence class of". Which would map to your example pre…
> The word "is", maps to the logical "equals" operator. It very obviously doesn't. A square is a rectangle. seadan83 is (probably) a mammal. Math is a language.
Find examples with two singular nouns and just the word 'is'.
The phrase in question: 'Math is language' is an example, or something like 'food is love' is too. I concede you could interpret those last few sentences with poetic license to be read more like: "A is a form of B", or "A is a B" - though that is not what was written and this is not a place to expect that much poetic license.
*edit*: a minute later, thought of a good example. "ice is water". True that "ice is a form of water", but strictly speaking no, "ice is not water". I'll concede there could exist an implied "is a", or an implied "is a form of", but that is poetic license IMO.
[0] Google AI summarized it pretty well: google "logical "is a" vs logical "is"
> In logic, "is" typically represents an equality relation, while "is a" (or "is of the type") represents an inclusion relation. "Is" indicates that two things are the same or identical, while "is a" indicates that one thing is a member of a larger class or set of things
Good code doesn’t just solve a problem, it solves it in a way that’s readable and modular. I think the problem-solving part of coding requires math skills, while the organization part requires writing skills. The organization part affects the problem-solving part, because if you write messy code (that you can’t reread once you forget or extend without rewriting) you’ll quickly get overwhelmed. Writing large math proo…
I've always found the car metaphor to work very good to understand this: A car is a machine that can transport itself to point A to B (some other rules apply). There are different types of cars, but you certainly haven't understood the definition of you say that something is not a car because is not a Volvo, or because it doesn't look like a Ford, when it's clearly able to transport itself.
Math is the study of ideal objects and the way they behave or are related to each others. We have many branches of mathematics because people have invented so many objects and rules to play with them. Programming is nothing if not this very definition. The fact that you don't have to "use math" when programming is not really addressing the point, it's like saying a car is not a car because it has no discernible brand.
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> 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…
This appears to be a link that contains zero support for your sentence. Neither the comment you linked nor the response below it features such an interpretation.
> 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?
You're in luck! I've already provided that material, and you responded to it. For further discussion, you'd need to have a better working understanding of English.
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> 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…
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> These more abstract skills—not basic arithmetic—are essential for understanding recursion, type inference, or algorithm design. No they're not. Academia has spent decades trying to formalize many aspects of programming and continues to be confused by the lack of correlation between comp sci grads and innovative programmers. Why is it that the drop-outs are succeeding so wildly? Recursion, for example, is learned by…
The drop-outs are "succeeding wildly" because people like Turing, Church, and Hilbert invented the sand pit they're playing in. Knuth created LaTeX. Pandoc is written in Haskell, famous for being a completely useless academic language with no real purpose beyond torturing undergraduates (it says here.) Efficient search and data compression algorithms aren't hacked together in late night hobby coding sessions. Cryptog…
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Math major here. 'is' is a reflexive relationship. If math is language, therefore language is math. I believe clearly language is not math, therefore math is not language. Math is described with language, Math itself is not language. It is a 'has-a' relationship vs a 'is-a' relationship.
> Math major here. You say that like you think it's a qualification? You're not making it look good. A common use of be is to express set membership rather than identity. For example, "two is an even number" or "tigers are cats". We may hope that one day you'll come to realize that set membership is not reflexive, and - more to the point - also not symmetric.
Google for "logical "is a" vs logical "is"".
Google AI answers this:
> "is" typically represents an equality relation
Rest is from the AI response:
In logic, "is" typically represents an equality relation, while "is a" (or "is of the type") represents an inclusion relation. "Is" indicates that two things are the same or identical, while "is a" indicates that one thing is a member of a larger class or set of things.
Logical "is" (equality):
Meaning:
"A is B" means that A and B are the same thing, or have the same properties.
Example:
"The Eiffel Tower is in Paris" (the Eiffel Tower and the thing in Paris are the same thing).
Meaning: "A is a B" means that A belongs to the category or class of things that are B.
Example: "A dog is an animal" (dogs are a type of animal).Earlier quoted context omitted.
> These more abstract skills—not basic arithmetic—are essential for understanding recursion, type inference, or algorithm design. No they're not. Academia has spent decades trying to formalize many aspects of programming and continues to be confused by the lack of correlation between comp sci grads and innovative programmers. Why is it that the drop-outs are succeeding so wildly? Recursion, for example, is learned by…
The drop-outs are "succeeding wildly" because people like Turing, Church, and Hilbert invented the sand pit they're playing in. Knuth created LaTeX. Pandoc is written in Haskell, famous for being a completely useless academic language with no real purpose beyond torturing undergraduates (it says here.) Efficient search and data compression algorithms aren't hacked together in late night hobby coding sessions. Cryptog…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most coding doesn't need much of any math past boolean logic and very basic set operations Coding IS math. Not "coding uses math", I mean it is math. Mathematicians do not deal in objects, but in relations among objects; they are free to replace some object by others so long as the relations remain unchanged. Content to them is irrelevant; they are interested in form only. - Poincare[0] I don't know how you code, b…
I don't think that quote really supports coding and math being equivalent. To me, the quote provides an abstraction of math through a structuralist perspective. Language can also be viewed through this abstraction. I think coding could share the abstraction, but that doesn't make the three of these fields equivalent.
Mathematics is a very extensive field, and covers a vast amount of subjects.
For the same reason it can't be said that mathematics is equivalent to coding, as there are many things in mathematics that are not relevant for coding.
However, by far the most interesting parts of coding are definitely related to mathematics.