Subj : Re: Good math skills a requirement?
To   : comp.programming
From : gds
Date : Thu Aug 04 2005 09:41 pm

"Phlip" <phlipcpp@yahoo.com> wrote:
>James C. wrote:
>> This question is probably asked often, but can someone be a decent
>> programmer without any advanced math skills? To be more specific, can
>> someone get by in programming with simple arithmetic (i.e. addition,
>> substraction, multiplication, and division)? [...]
>> How in the heck is geometry, trig, calculus, etc. going to aid in
>> this type of project?
>High schools teach those due to education initiatives during the Cold War to
>support advanced weapons research.

I've noticed some high schools are starting to focus less on geometry,
trig, etc. and more on subjects that could be considered prereqs to
discrete math.

When I was in high school (during the late 1970s), quite a bit of time
was spent on geometry, trig, and calculus, to the point where we
proved many theorems and derived many results.  However, some topics
were covered, such as using linear interpolation to solve log-trig
problems where exact values for the functions were not in the tables.
Calculators were not allowed on tests.  Also, we spent quite a bit of
time learning how to plot certain types of trig functions using graph
paper, which came up later in some of my EE courses as an undergrad.
Nowadays, people use graphing calculators to do this sort of thing.

>> I don't see how a programmer would need anything beyond simple arithmetic
>> to write an email client in a programming langauage such as Delphi.
>You might not realize how much algebra, set theory, counting theory,
>geometric proofs, etc. you already understand to program loop statements and
>recursion. People bad at those don't typically make good programmers,
>regardless of their trig or calculus skills.

I was an honor student in high school math, but I struggled through
some topics covered early in my MIT undergraduate curriculum.  I was
puzzled, because I didn't understand why I was having so much
trouble.  Granted, the pace of the classes was much faster than in
high school (even though I was in honors math classes), and there were
other things I needed to learn how to do, such as use Unix and Emacs.
It was, as they say, like drinking from a firehose.  But what really
bothered me was that I didn't seem to be able to leverage much of my
past knowledge and experience to learn the material that was being
presented to me at MIT.  It's only recently that I've been able to
step back and analyze what happened back then, and come to the
realization that I would have benefitted much more from the kind of
high school education that focuses on principles leading up to
discrete math and frames them in contexts that arise in computer
science.

--gregbo
gds at best dot com

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