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> Mathematical thinking is about formulating things so that one can handle them mathematically, when that’s possible. Computational thinking is a much bigger an
by wz1000 10y ago
> Mathematical thinking is about formulating things so that one can handle them mathematically, when that’s possible. Computational thinking is a much bigger and broader story, because there are just a lot more things that can be handled computationally.
This is a completely lopsided statement. Computation(via some automaton) is a small subset of what mathematics deals with.
It is possible to deal with concepts and objects mathematically a lot more often than computationally.
- mrob 10y agoThere was some recent HN discussion on the limits of formal methods: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12468479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12468479 If we're willing to accept broken software some of the time we can do far more, and in practice this is how the vast majority of software is developed. In this context I think "mathematical" vs "computational" has the colloquial meaning of "proven" vs "empirically tested".