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Topology is useful in robotics and control to define the set of achievable states in a system and their connectivity.

• chubot 10y ago
  On further reflection, it does seem pretty hard to find a subfield of math which isn't relevant to SOME subfield of computing. I was going to say non-Euclidean geometry, but that's very relevant if you're doing mapping software. But that's a different thing than saying that a particular subfield of math is "practical to programmers". I would say that programmers need the foundations of logic, algebra, and probability, and a bit of calculus (less than I was taught). And THEN they can learn topology, number theory, non-Euclidean geometry or advanced calculus if they need to, for their specific domain. You never know what you're going to end up doing 10 years down the road. And of course that seems to be what happens in a good undergrad CS education, so apparently people better than us have thought about it :) Indeed college is supposed to give you the ability to learn how to learn, when new things come up, as they always do in programming. Quantum computing is basically a ton of linear algebra as far as I can tell.