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As usual, the answer to the eternal question of “how much formal math training do you need for X” turns out to be “right around the amount the author of the arg

As usual, the answer to the eternal question of “how much formal math training do you need for X” turns out to be “right around the amount the author of the argument has had.” Why is it that we always have to prove the instrumental value of maths education? You’re a lot more likely to “need” your maths in the “real world” than your Shakespeare, but few have much energy for fighting the idea that literature should be studied for it’s own sake. Wondering about the minimum amount of effort required for success is more valuable for its insights into whether this is something you should pursue than for any answer you could find. So here’s what I should think is the obvious answer: No, significant formal or informal maths training is neither necessary nor sufficient for a successful or even exemplary career as a programmer. But talent and success in the two do seem to correlate pretty strongly, and those who do have above average backgrounds in maths seem to feel it’s beneficial and provides an advantage. No, you don’t need maths any more than you need strong writing skills or comfort teaching or experience with office politics or a sophisticated sense of humour. Those are all, however, astonishingly useful in getting the things you want, even if that’s only a richer experience of life.

jkaptur 6y ago
I agree with everything you’ve said, but I want to push back on the (non-load-bearing) “few have much energy for fighting the idea that literature should be studied for it’s own sake.” It seems to me that lots of people have endless energy for this fight, unfortunately.
- ajarmst 6y ago
  It’s possible that the sample set of anecdotes I base this on is a bit skewed, as I teach undergraduate maths. In my limited experience I had to put a lot more effort into keeping basic differential calculus in the required freshman curriculum than my colleagues from the English department had to keep the %#^* five-paragraph essay. (Full disclosure, I’ve also taught our “Communications” course because of a misspent youth in an Arts program and work as a technical writer, and my colleagues from the English department supported me in killing the Essay Writing part of the course—-the fight was with government and industry reps who’d swallowed the “soft-skills” pill.)
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    I am also an undergraduate math professor. In our faculty governing body, I had an argument with colleagues in English who, while urging the importance of the written-communication core requirement, since everyone needs to be able to communicate clearly (a claim with which I agree!), also urged removing the quantitative-reasoning core requirement, since that skill is not important to people in the humanities. I can see being defensive about the importance of one's discipline in a society that sometimes seems to deemphasise it, but you'd think that struggle would make one more, not less, sympathetic to the need to keep basic literacy in other disciplines.
    - ajarmst 6y ago
      Exactly. Or, for that matter, might make one think that those basic literacies might enhance each other. I clearly remember participating in an Honours Philosophy seminar where we did close studies of works by Russell and Leibniz, and I was literally the only person in the room who had any formal training in Set Theory or Calculus, and one of perhaps three (including the professor) with Symbolic Logic beyond the freshman intro. The idea that such exposure would be valuable in studying “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” or “The Monadology” wasn’t one we were equipped to contemplate, much less address. I also recall that my jokes about imaginary numbers during lectures on Descartes fell pretty flat, but that was probably for the best.
- ab3rC1te 6y ago
  You know honestly, we as an entire whole of the world should just go back to hands on training. Forget studying the same crap for 15-20 years of our lives to have a damn calculator to solve basic adding and subtracting that's done on a cash register in our daily lives. How many of you solve out of this world equations in your daily life? 95% of the world doesn't. We all use basic add and subtract. Hardly anyone knows how to start a fire, or kill game to survive. If the internet goes out and you can't check that daily habit of yours, your life is turned upside down. Its a waste to study all these years to find out you don't need to figure out a right side of triangle to drop a tree. If you can count to 10 on your fingers, what's the point of an in depth educational system.
  - mint2 6y ago
    Is this sarcasm?
    - ab3rC1te 6y ago
      If you think it is, give yourself a pat on the back. If not, then give yourself another pat on your back with your other hand. I suppose its up to the individual to decide what they believe is sarcasm. It could be one telling the truth.
freetime2 6y ago
I think the “problem” here is that there are so many useful things you can do with math that we spend all of our time in school learning the useful things first, with much less emphasis on the enjoyment aspect. It’s a shame, too. As an undergraduate I had a very small amount of exposure to some papers in theoretical computer science. I presume they were fairly typical for the world of mathematics - trying to establish boundaries on how small something can be. And not much application in the real world. But I remember having my mind blown at the way the authors could take one problem, convert it to some completely different domain, and use previous work in that domain to prove things about the original problem. It was very beautiful, and I think even that very limited exposure has changed the way I see the world. Then the real world came knocking and I haven’t been back since.
- treeman79 6y ago
  I would have been happy with useful. Most of college was proving everything. Okay, I get this is important for high level math. I want to do “something” with it. I did a lot of basic robotics programming for pay in early college. Taught myself a lot of math to get the job done. Later I hit Trigonometry. Wow that would have been handy in that role.
WalterBright 6y ago
> few have much energy for fighting the idea that literature should be studied for it’s own sake I agree with your post, except that statement is a bit of personal choice. From my perspective, knowing how airplanes work and how they fly makes my life richer, but I doubt lit majors would feel the same way. (For example, when my house was built, I noticed a weak spot in the structure holding the house up, and had it reinforced. Without engineering training, I never would have noticed. Does this matter? In my previous house, some of the doors wouldn't close properly, and in the crawl space I noticed the main loads were not supported directly by a column on a concrete pad. The structure there had been gradually sinking. Jacking up that section of the house, installing a pad and a column, fixed that and the doors all worked again. I missed another structural fault until one day a window just shattered from the stress of the distorting wall.)

jkaptur 6y ago

I agree with everything you’ve said, but I want to push back on the (non-load-bearing) “few have much energy for fighting the idea that literature should be studied for it’s own sake.” It seems to me that lots of people have endless energy for this fight, unfortunately.

ajarmst 6y ago
It’s possible that the sample set of anecdotes I base this on is a bit skewed, as I teach undergraduate maths. In my limited experience I had to put a lot more effort into keeping basic differential calculus in the required freshman curriculum than my colleagues from the English department had to keep the %#^* five-paragraph essay. (Full disclosure, I’ve also taught our “Communications” course because of a misspent youth in an Arts program and work as a technical writer, and my colleagues from the English department supported me in killing the Essay Writing part of the course—-the fight was with government and industry reps who’d swallowed the “soft-skills” pill.)
- JadeNB 6y ago
  I am also an undergraduate math professor. In our faculty governing body, I had an argument with colleagues in English who, while urging the importance of the written-communication core requirement, since everyone needs to be able to communicate clearly (a claim with which I agree!), also urged removing the quantitative-reasoning core requirement, since that skill is not important to people in the humanities. I can see being defensive about the importance of one's discipline in a society that sometimes seems to deemphasise it, but you'd think that struggle would make one more, not less, sympathetic to the need to keep basic literacy in other disciplines.
  - ajarmst 6y ago
    Exactly. Or, for that matter, might make one think that those basic literacies might enhance each other. I clearly remember participating in an Honours Philosophy seminar where we did close studies of works by Russell and Leibniz, and I was literally the only person in the room who had any formal training in Set Theory or Calculus, and one of perhaps three (including the professor) with Symbolic Logic beyond the freshman intro. The idea that such exposure would be valuable in studying “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” or “The Monadology” wasn’t one we were equipped to contemplate, much less address. I also recall that my jokes about imaginary numbers during lectures on Descartes fell pretty flat, but that was probably for the best.
ab3rC1te 6y ago
You know honestly, we as an entire whole of the world should just go back to hands on training. Forget studying the same crap for 15-20 years of our lives to have a damn calculator to solve basic adding and subtracting that's done on a cash register in our daily lives. How many of you solve out of this world equations in your daily life? 95% of the world doesn't. We all use basic add and subtract. Hardly anyone knows how to start a fire, or kill game to survive. If the internet goes out and you can't check that daily habit of yours, your life is turned upside down. Its a waste to study all these years to find out you don't need to figure out a right side of triangle to drop a tree. If you can count to 10 on your fingers, what's the point of an in depth educational system.
- mint2 6y ago
  Is this sarcasm?
  - ab3rC1te 6y ago
    If you think it is, give yourself a pat on the back. If not, then give yourself another pat on your back with your other hand. I suppose its up to the individual to decide what they believe is sarcasm. It could be one telling the truth.

freetime2 6y ago

I think the “problem” here is that there are so many useful things you can do with math that we spend all of our time in school learning the useful things first, with much less emphasis on the enjoyment aspect. It’s a shame, too. As an undergraduate I had a very small amount of exposure to some papers in theoretical computer science. I presume they were fairly typical for the world of mathematics - trying to establish boundaries on how small something can be. And not much application in the real world. But I remember having my mind blown at the way the authors could take one problem, convert it to some completely different domain, and use previous work in that domain to prove things about the original problem. It was very beautiful, and I think even that very limited exposure has changed the way I see the world. Then the real world came knocking and I haven’t been back since.

treeman79 6y ago
I would have been happy with useful. Most of college was proving everything. Okay, I get this is important for high level math. I want to do “something” with it. I did a lot of basic robotics programming for pay in early college. Taught myself a lot of math to get the job done. Later I hit Trigonometry. Wow that would have been handy in that role.

WalterBright 6y ago

> few have much energy for fighting the idea that literature should be studied for it’s own sake I agree with your post, except that statement is a bit of personal choice. From my perspective, knowing how airplanes work and how they fly makes my life richer, but I doubt lit majors would feel the same way. (For example, when my house was built, I noticed a weak spot in the structure holding the house up, and had it reinforced. Without engineering training, I never would have noticed. Does this matter? In my previous house, some of the doors wouldn't close properly, and in the crawl space I noticed the main loads were not supported directly by a column on a concrete pad. The structure there had been gradually sinking. Jacking up that section of the house, installing a pad and a column, fixed that and the doors all worked again. I missed another structural fault until one day a window just shattered from the stress of the distorting wall.)