4 ms·

Can we say: "If you understand the first 20 pages of TAOCP, you understand Erlang"?

jacquesm 10y ago
You can understand Erlang even if you're not that good at math, but you won't be able to make much of TAOCP if you aren't good at math. One thing is for sure: just trying to read TAOCP will eventually make you better at math.
- old_sound 10y ago
  There's no such thing as "being good at math". You either put effort and practice to learn it, or you don't. Fixed va Growth Mindset, etc…
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > There's no such thing as "being good at math". You either put effort and practice to learn it, or you don't. I agree with your second sentence, and, as a mathematician and a teacher, I think that I agree with the spirit of the first, but I think that it's probably not worded as you mean. Think of the same sentence with, say, 'baseball' in place of 'math': I think that most people would agree with the second sentence, but not the first. By the same token, there's no such thing as "being inherently good" (or, for that matter, inherently bad) "at math"; but I think that it would be silly to pretend that the effort and practice don't make you good (or at least better) at it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
OskarS 10y ago
The thing about the beginning of Vol 1 of TAOCP is that it begins with the "mathematical preliminaries" which is among the most difficult things in the book (aside from some of the more hard-core analysis). Like, his description of heap-sort in Vol 3. is easy enough to follow, but fuck man, generating functions are hard!
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Which is why my professor and classmate and I switched to Concrete Mathematics about halfway through working through chapter 1. More thorough examination of many of the topics in chapter 1, plus more material.
  - _asummers 10y ago
    My advisor would always make a joke to his classes, when that book came up, that it had a dual purpose name - - that it was foundational, but also because it's hard as concrete. I used it as reference in some of my math classes but haven't given it a thorough read.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      We worked through about 1/3 of the material starting one summer term (where we started on TAOCP) and finishing sometime in the fall. Definitely hard, but it also helped me finally understand a lot of math that I "knew" but hadn't yet grokked.

You can understand Erlang even if you're not that good at math, but you won't be able to make much of TAOCP if you aren't good at math. One thing is for sure: just trying to read TAOCP will eventually make you better at math.

old_sound 10y ago
There's no such thing as "being good at math". You either put effort and practice to learn it, or you don't. Fixed va Growth Mindset, etc…
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > There's no such thing as "being good at math". You either put effort and practice to learn it, or you don't. I agree with your second sentence, and, as a mathematician and a teacher, I think that I agree with the spirit of the first, but I think that it's probably not worded as you mean. Think of the same sentence with, say, 'baseball' in place of 'math': I think that most people would agree with the second sentence, but not the first. By the same token, there's no such thing as "being inherently good" (or, for that matter, inherently bad) "at math"; but I think that it would be silly to pretend that the effort and practice don't make you good (or at least better) at it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

OskarS 10y ago

The thing about the beginning of Vol 1 of TAOCP is that it begins with the "mathematical preliminaries" which is among the most difficult things in the book (aside from some of the more hard-core analysis). Like, his description of heap-sort in Vol 3. is easy enough to follow, but fuck man, generating functions are hard!

Jtsummers 10y ago
Which is why my professor and classmate and I switched to Concrete Mathematics about halfway through working through chapter 1. More thorough examination of many of the topics in chapter 1, plus more material.
- _asummers 10y ago
  My advisor would always make a joke to his classes, when that book came up, that it had a dual purpose name - - that it was foundational, but also because it's hard as concrete. I used it as reference in some of my math classes but haven't given it a thorough read.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    We worked through about 1/3 of the material starting one summer term (where we started on TAOCP) and finishing sometime in the fall. Definitely hard, but it also helped me finally understand a lot of math that I "knew" but hadn't yet grokked.