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this experience could depend on the field of work you are in. Being fluent in statistics/linear algebra & discrete math/category theory -- makes you 'head and

by maga_2020 8y ago

this experience could depend on the field of work you are in. Being fluent in statistics/linear algebra & discrete math/category theory -- makes you 'head and shoulders' above others, when it comes to assessing industry trends, and deciding if some are applicable to your work. Having those skills, does not mean, of course, that they would compensate for the lack of creativity, hard work, risk taking, constant year-after-year-self study, or inter-personal & presentation skills. Some examples: Being able to understand word-vectors and related techniques, for chat boats, or compliance -- is very helpful. Being able to reason about degrees of security of data published on 'immutable databases' or 'data streams' -- is useful, again in compliance (as in making records tamper-proof). Being able to design protocol/interaction across systems with context-free grammars -- is helpful, in protected against certain types of attacks. I would say this is reasonably relevant for systems that are exposed on public internet. Being able to read reasonably recent (or 20-30 year old) papers on Differential privacy/homomorphic encryption -- allows you to reason how effective your data protection strategy could be (again relevant for compliance). Obviously, understanding financial service models, performance models of distributed queuing systems -- require understanding of the maths I mention above. Being able to recognize where in your, even basic business workflow or database/state management -- there is an appropriate place to introduce finite-state-automate (to reduce number on 'unanticipated conditions') -- is also helpful. Being able to recognize database mapping through the lens of category theory, improves how you could design your data models (because right at the time of designing your data layout you are also thinking about transformations between them -- which is basic need for non-trivial business system integration). Opposite to the above post, I always feel that I need more math background that I have. And I would love to go back in time and significantly beef-up my education in that area.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
My work has spanned almost all of the different examples you listed, and I don’t believe my ability to work in those topics or understand them was aided or helped by studying discrete math at all. (Note: you lump linear algebra in to the discussion but it is dramatically different than what is typically called “discrete math.”) Additionally, many of my colleagues on machine learning and intense distributed scientific computing applications that I’ve worked on have had zero discrete math education or self-teaching. I am more effective at engineering in these applications than some of these people, and less effective than others. Prior exposure to discrete math seems to have no effect.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

My work has spanned almost all of the different examples you listed, and I don’t believe my ability to work in those topics or understand them was aided or helped by studying discrete math at all. (Note: you lump linear algebra in to the discussion but it is dramatically different than what is typically called “discrete math.”) Additionally, many of my colleagues on machine learning and intense distributed scientific computing applications that I’ve worked on have had zero discrete math education or self-teaching. I am more effective at engineering in these applications than some of these people, and less effective than others. Prior exposure to discrete math seems to have no effect.