A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

eric_bullington wrote: post #56

decasteve wrote: post #48

This topic comes up every so often. I think my previous comment applies here [1]: I started a Math degree after 16 years of programming without any Math beyond high school (the highest being high school calculus). Most of my work as a software developer didn't require any "higher" Maths. Once I began studying math, including Modern Algebra, Analysis, Graph Theory, Category Theory, etc., I realized I understood many t…

> The range of problems I could tackle as a programmer was limited by math. It turns out this was partly true. Would you mind expanding on this? I've often thought about going back to school for a math degree, or at least for the core degree courses. Did functional programming, particularly in a pure language like Haskell, become easier to reason about once you had studied Category Theory in depth?

Post by nabla9 » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

Pyret wrote: post #49

nabla9 wrote: post #29

Usually good books travel from English speaking world to other languages as translations. One of the masterpieces that has gone the opposite direction is: Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (three volumes bound as one) by A. D. Aleksandrov, A. N. Kolmogorov, M. A. Lavrent'ev (18 authors total) http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Content-Methods-Meaning-Do... This book is really good companion for autodidacts…

I own this book and I'll tell you it's not easy learning math from this book. Most of it is just very light overview. There are much better rigorous textbooks that are simpler and more complete. There are some great textbooks translated from Russian. Analysis by Kolmogorov, (rigorous) Linear Algebra by Shilov, Complex Analysis by Markushevich to name a few.

Post by Pyret » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 2:13 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #63

Pyret wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own this book and I'll tell you it's not easy learning math from this book. Most of it is just very light overview. There are much better rigorous textbooks that are simpler and more complete. There are some great textbooks translated from Russian. Analysis by Kolmogorov, (rigorous) Linear Algebra by Shilov, Complex Analysis by Markushevich to name a few.

That's why I said it's good companion. The book covers too much to be thorough. Each chapter gives good introduction to the subject matter and ends with list of suggested reading. I always read the relevant parts from this book before going deeper. Not everyone is going to dwell into non-euclidean geometry, functional analysis and topology. Furthermore, I don't think typical self studying engineer in Hacker News want…

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 2:23 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #38

pjmlp wrote: post #33

I don't get the title. At least on my home country, a Software Engineer job title implies a CS degree with at least two years full of math.

In real life, a software engineer can finish his studies and get a job with only a tiny knowledge of math, in every country, regardless what the curriculum says...

Post by ibebrett » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 2:38 PM UTC

jxm262 wrote: post #62

I don't mean to go off track here, but as someone who's been casually interested in math, I'm wondering which branches of math are the most applicable to software development. I've taken Discrete Mathematics, Stats, and Calc in college, but now I've been working in the field for a few years and want to try learning a bit more. I've been thinking of trying some courses on Cryptography, but it would be a major shift fr…