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Similar story here - went to college, majored in CS, found out how much of CS is math, thought it was just there to be difficult, learned just enough to (barely

Similar story here - went to college, majored in CS, found out how much of CS is math, thought it was just there to be difficult, learned just enough to (barely) pass. It wasn’t until much later that I did some graphics programming that I wished I had paid closer attention - I’ve been going back and trying to re-teach myself a lot to the stuff, like differential equations, that I probably would have gotten a lot quicker and easier if I had just paid attention when it was the only responsibility I had along with access to an expert on the topic who I was actually paying to help me learn it. Oh, well, some of us have to do everything the hard way…

zcrackerz 7y ago
It would really help if professors would give you a taste of something applicable before diving deep into the math itself. I suffered through most of differential equations and calculus, but I happened to take a computer graphics course before linear algebra. We learned just enough math to make things work but linear algebra really took a deep dive that I was able to appreciate having had the basics around affine transformations explained in a very visual and intriguing manner.
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
  It's a major problem still: teachers neglect giving examples of practical application of a given concept (might be difficult at times, I admit), and miss the opportunity to make knowledge stick and increase the intuitive understanding of the subject. I still remember my dialogue with my high school maths teacher when first learning calculus, it was more or less along the lines: "But why do we need these differentials?" "Because it will help you to understand integration." "But why do we need integration?" "Because it will help you in your further education." (No, she didn't even mention velocity/acceleration or area below the curve as it's usually done, I had to figure these out myself.)

zcrackerz 7y ago

It would really help if professors would give you a taste of something applicable before diving deep into the math itself. I suffered through most of differential equations and calculus, but I happened to take a computer graphics course before linear algebra. We learned just enough math to make things work but linear algebra really took a deep dive that I was able to appreciate having had the basics around affine transformations explained in a very visual and intriguing manner.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
It's a major problem still: teachers neglect giving examples of practical application of a given concept (might be difficult at times, I admit), and miss the opportunity to make knowledge stick and increase the intuitive understanding of the subject. I still remember my dialogue with my high school maths teacher when first learning calculus, it was more or less along the lines: "But why do we need these differentials?" "Because it will help you to understand integration." "But why do we need integration?" "Because it will help you in your further education." (No, she didn't even mention velocity/acceleration or area below the curve as it's usually done, I had to figure these out myself.)