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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)

#401

Post by vidarh »

sebastialonso wrote: post #392
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…

Is it possible your mental model of what CS is more aligned with software engineering rather than actual CS? Could you share some examples of what you consider to be CS but lacks any mathematical relation? I agree is not a useful grouping in practice. I'm just interested in what makes you think like you do.

I did categorically not claim, nor even suggest, that any CS "lacks any mathematical relation".

What I claimed was that in computer science we often discuss things in terms that would not be the natural way of dealing with it in maths. We do that because our focus is different, and our abstractions are different.

It doesn't mean it's not math. It means it's not useful to insist that it isn't a different field, and its obtuse when people insist it's all the same.

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

#403

Post by Shorel »

leptons wrote: post #268
godelski wrote: post #126

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…

>Coding IS math. No, not always. Quite a lot of high-level code doesn't require any math at all. It doesn't take math to perform CRUD operations, which account for a lot of programming work. Sure, the underlying machine code is all based on math, but the higher level programming doesn't need to involve a single math equation for it to be useful. Let's see where the goalposts move now...

Mathematics is not "equations". Most of mathematics is not related with calculus either.

For anything CRUD, you put the data into a database. The underlying database is relational, or a key->store.

If it's relational, that's one branch of mathematics. If it's another kind of database, it's another branch of mathematics. Mathematics is extensive, and covers more things you can imagine at a glance.

The main difference between writing mathematics and programming, and this applies to any form of programming, is that in mathematics writing a formal proof is amazingly close to: you write the program, and you are also the compiler, and you are the CPU, performing all operations yourself. With programming you only have to write the program.

Source: On one hand I have studied pure mathematics (not the simplified applied mathematics that are taught in engineering, which is mostly equations), on the other hand I have been working as a software developer for over 15 years.

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

#404

Post by seba_dos1 »

seadan83 wrote: post #393
seba_dos1 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You point out the "is a" relationship, not the "is" relationship, they are different. [0] 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…

> You point out the "is a" relationship, not the "is" relationship, they are different.

Well, what you reacted to was, let me copy'n'paste, "Math is a language". It was you who insisted that "is" in this sentence maps to "equals" relation, so thanks for agreeing that you were wrong.

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

#405

Post by seadan83 »

godelski wrote: post #335
leptons wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand you have strong opinions, I just don't understand why. In math are highly concerned with structures and abstraction. We have things called operators. They aren't just addition and multiplication. We also use those words to describe different operations. They have things like groups, rings, fields, and algebras. Yes, plural. The purpose of these things is to create logical frameworks. It matters not what…

> I understand you have strong opinions, I just don't understand why.

As someone that is "on the other side of the fence", and getting flamed for it, maybe I can shed some light since I have the other perspective as well. IMO, The reason for not seeing eye to eye is (for example) akin to saying "word problems are math". (Thinking of a grade school word problems for common reference). Yes, they are readily mapped to mathematical models that can solve the word problem & perhaps almost indistinguishably so. Though no - word problems are not math. Word problems are a series of phrases and words. That's where the talking past each other comes in... Different interpretations of "word problems are math", or "code is math". It's seemingly not clear whether we are talking about logical 'implies', 'element of', or 'equals'.

Which goes to "We can perfectly describe the CRUD operations with set theory.", we all agree there. That is not readily conveyed though when writing things like "code is math".

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

#406

Post by seadan83 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #395
seadan83 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 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…

Very cool how the last sentence you leave off with always has to be a personal attack. It's breaking the rules of the discussion, irrelevant. Stop trying to win points. Let's focus on the substance.

> 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.

It's interesting, because there is a disagreement about whether there is a paradox or not. There is a paradox if you take my perspective (that an equals relationship is being expressed), but none if an implication relationship is assumed.

These two sentences:

- "By that same logic you could also say that language is math"

- "Not quite, but the inverse is true."

The "not quite" says that "language is math" is not true. So we have "A = B", but "B != A", which is a paradox. OTOH it's not a paradox if what is actually being said is "A => B" but "B !=> A"

> You're in luck! I've already provided that material, and you responded to it.

Hello bad faith! I hope you are doing well today. Let's end the conversation here.

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

#407

Post by Shorel »

My own definition of mathematics for the sake of this comparison:

- If you can write a formal proof, starting from some assumptions and proving some result, it is mathematics. The assumptions are the axioms. Then you use logic, which is the same programming logic, and then you get to some result.

It can be an invariant in a programming function, it can be a more general result, if you can write a proof, it is mathematics. Most algorithms involve proofs, so they are mathematics.

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

#408

Post by Shorel »

mmaunder wrote: post #356
albertoCaroM wrote: post #349

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…

> 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…

My own definition of mathematics for the sake of this comparison: - If you can write a formal proof, starting from some assumptions and proving some result, it is mathematics. The assumptions are the axioms. Then you use logic, which is the same programming logic, and then you get to some result.

It can be an invariant in a programming function, it can be a more general result, if you can write a proof, it is mathematics. Most algorithms involve proofs, so they are mathematics.

It has nothing to do with it being "sadism" or academic gatekeeping.

These people are doing mathematics without knowing it is mathematics. That's all.

> Why is it that the drop-outs are succeeding so wildly?

Here is where you can learn about confirmation bias and educate yourself.

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

#409

Post by godelski »

waterhouse wrote: post #342
godelski wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> coding and math being equivalent Please see lambda calculus. I mean equivalent in the way mathematicians do: that we can uniquely map everything from one set to another

"There are those who tell us that any choice from among theoretically-equivalent alternatives is merely a question of taste. These are the people who bring up the Strong Church-Turing Thesis in discussions of programming languages meant for use by humans . They are malicious idiots. The only punishment which could stand a chance at reforming these miscreants into decent people would be a year or two at hard labor. An…

No one is suggesting programming with lambda calculus. But it would be naïve to think lambda calculus isn't important. They serve different purposes.

We didn't:

  bring up the Strong Church-Turing Thesis in discussions of programming languages meant for use by humans.

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

#410

Post by seadan83 »

voidspark wrote: post #325
leptons wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

It's almost the argument of programming vs computer science coming out here.

This is math:

{x | x.id = 1}

OTOH, a SQL query is a SQL query.

This thread is hilarious though. It's like

- Cashier: here is your change.

- Customer: you did math!

- Cashier, no, I gave you change.

- Customer: that IS math!

- Cashier: You mean, I used math to give you change?

- Customer: No, giving change doesn't use math, it IS math!!!!" [2]

= D

Moving along.. FWIW, indeed SQL was created to model set theory (relational algebra and tuple calculus), the close relationship is no accident of course [0][1])

> No one is moving goalposts

I feel too they are.

First goal post:

> Coding IS math. >> No, not always. Quite a lot of high-level code doesn't require any math at all. It doesn't take math to perform CRUD operations

Second goal post:

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

CRUD is closely related to SQL, and SQL is closely related to various mathematics. Are they identical and therefore equivalent? No - because your database is not going to like it when you write "{x | x.id = 1}", and the Oracle DB might not like something that you can write for your Postgres DB.

[0] https://simpleprogrammer.com/mastering-sql/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

[2] To quote: """Not "coding uses math", I mean it is math""" @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43872771

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