David Corking on 2009-04-09
I think I'll try this
This link has been bookmarked by 100 people . It was first bookmarked on 02 Apr 2006, by Santhosh.
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The vast majority of programming involves traversing lists and doing various kinds of sorts. For these tasks, graph theory and queuing theory remain indispensible. Naturally, these areas of math never made it onto the author's list of things allegedly "important to know."
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I have daydreamed about a solution. I think what should be done is to restructure math so that a student would take a one semester course in polynomial algebra, where they mastered thos basic skills. No roots, no rational expressions (algebraic expressions which look like a fraction), just polynomials. Many more students could handle that. Then they would take "Polynomial Calculus".
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Math is a lot easier to pick up after you know how to program.
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I've found it's much easier to learn and appreciate geometry and trig after you understand what exactly math is — where it came from, where it's going, what it's for. No need to dive right into memorizing geometric proofs and trigonometric identities.
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rampion"I think the best way to start learning math is to spend 15 to 30 minutes a day surfing in Wikipedia. [...] If there's something you don't understand, click the link and read about it. Do this recursively until you get bored or tired. "
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Sachin Rawatlearning maths for programmers in an exploratory way
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* Statistics, some of which is covered in my discrete math book, but it's really a discipline of its own. A pretty important one, too, but hopefully it needs no introduction.
* Algebra and Linear Algebra (i.e., matrices). They should teach Linear Algebra immediately after algebra. It's pretty easy, and it's amazingly useful in all sorts of domains, including machine learning.
* Mathematical Logic. I have a really cool totally unreadable book on the subject by Stephen Kleene, the inventor of the Kleene closure and, as far as I know, Kleenex. Don't read that one. I swear I've tried 20 times, and never made it past chapter 2. If anyone has a recommendation for a better introduction to this field, please post a comment. It's obviously important stuff, though.
* Information Theory and Kolmogorov Complexity. Weird, eh? I bet none of your high schools taught either of those. They're both pretty new. Information theory is (veeery roughly) about data compression, and Kolmogorov Complexity is (also roughly) about algorithmic complexity. I.e., how small you can you make it, how long will it take, how elegant can the program or data structure be, things like that. They're both fun, interesting and useful.
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Bob LoganGreat blog on math and programming. Very interesting.
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Math For Programmers
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nathan arnoldThey teach math all wrong in school. Way, WAY wrong. If you teach yourself math the right way, you'll learn faster, remember it longer, and it'll be much more valuable to you as a programmer.
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Bruno MartinsI've been working for the past 15 months on repairing my rusty math skills, ever since I read a biography of Johny von Neumann. I've read a huge stack of math books, and I have an even bigger stack of unread math books. And it's starting to come together.
Public Stiky Notes
I think this argument is of the type of "this is how it is, therefore this is how it should be", in other words a closed mind. In fact, the more I see it, the more I think of Alan Kay's lesson in discrete calculus that he gives to 6th graders, and the more I think that _that_ reflects the real world, and, as far as I can tell so far, the way that real applied mathematicians think.
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