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in Computer Science we have things like: "Quick Sort", "Merge Sort", "Map", "Hashtable", "LRU", etc... Those are trivial concepts though. The article brings up
by chongli 6y ago
in Computer Science we have things like: "Quick Sort", "Merge Sort", "Map", "Hashtable", "LRU", etc...
Those are trivial concepts though. The article brings up "perfectoid spaces", as if to suggest their superiority to "Scholze spaces", yet neither name gives any clue as to what they are:
In mathematics, perfectoid spaces are adic spaces of special kind, which occur in the study of problems of "mixed characteristic", such as local fields of characteristic zero which have residue fields of characteristic prime p.
A perfectoid field is a complete topological field K whose topology is induced by a nondiscrete valuation of rank 1, such that the Frobenius endomorphism Φ is surjective on K°/p where K° denotes the ring of power-bounded elements. [1]
Oh, okay. See, the problem is that modern mathematical structures are built on top of centuries of prior work. Computer science, on the other hand, is still in its infancy as a field.
I hope Computer Science divorces from Math, and takes its own path to more logical naming of things and less useless symbols used in it.
That's silly. Computer science is a subfield of math. All computer scientists working in research are mathematicians by training. You won't get anywhere at all if you try to enter the field without a mathematical background.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectoid_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectoid_space
- xrisk 6y ago> You won’t get anywhere at all if you try to enter the field without a mathematical background. Unnecessary gatekeeping. There’s a lot of engineering-oriented research that has nothing to do with math.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoThere is no research anywhere, in any field, that has nothing to do with math.
- i-am-curious 6y agoNow this is most certainly wrong. Example (search "history research"): "Research in history involves developing an understanding of the past through the examination and interpretation of evidence. Evidence may exist in the form of texts, physical remains of historic sites, recorded data, pictures, maps, artifacts, and so on."
- thaumasiotes 6y agoTaking a very obvious example, you can't do much in the way of historical research without at least trying to establish which things happened before which other things. It's a serious problem in ancient history.
- afiori 6y agobut you can do that without any math background, for sure there are applications of math in history research but they are just applications
- chongli 6y agoI'm pretty sure modern historians use a lot of mathematical tools: statistics, information science, digital archives, computer imaging, etc. It's very hard to search for this, though, because all of the results concern the history of mathematics. You have to examine the tools and methods used. Pretty much every field in the social sciences and humanities requires their undergrads to take at least one course in statistics. Sure, these students may complain about it but they need to be trained to not make common statistical errors in their publications. Unfortunately, they still do, which highlights the importance of mathematical education even in these fields.
- Laakeri 6y agoComputer science is not a subfield of math. Theoretical computer science is, but there is a lot more to cs than just tcs, for example: operating systems, programming languages, human computer interaction, etc. I agree on your first point though, I think the concepts named after people are usually so abstract that the hard part is to really understand the concepts, not to remember the name.
- chongli 6y agofor example: operating systems, programming languages, human computer interaction, etc. Those topics might seem to have nothing to do with math but all of their components have mathematical underpinnings. Algorithms, data structures, complexity theory, and even the physics of end-to-end latency, colour perception, etc. There probably are some people out there, working in these fields with only a high school math background, but I'd imagine they're exceedingly rare. Anyone who's completed a CS degree has done their fair share of math.
- detaro 6y agoEveryone who completed a physics degree has done at least as much math as a CS degree holder, is physics a subfield of math? (I think there is a discussion to be had about making the distinction "CS" vs "theoretical CS" as the GP comment does, or if it should be "CS" vs some other term ("computing"? feels a bit general))
- Grustaf 6y agoWell, CS is more like an extension of a very tiny corner of maths. And practically speaking, most computer scientists and 99% of programmers are terrible at math, to the point that they don’t even genuinely understand basic undergraduate concepts from linear algebra.
- chongli 6y agoWorking computer scientists (academics) are definitely not terrible at math. There are a great deal of complicated proofs involved in areas such as complexity theory, algorithms, and data structures. Their jobs are not altogether different from those of mathematicians.
- Grustaf 6y agoIt might be complicated, but as far as I’ve seen, not in a mathematical sense. Perhaps you have some examples?
- atq2119 6y agoThe tight performance bounds for Union-Find data structures are ridiculously complicated to prove given how simple the algorithm is, even in a mathematical sense. There isn't a lot of theory-building in algorithms, compared to the more traditional fields of maths, but the combinatorics are formidable.