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Calculus is in your curriculum to train your way of thought. Namely to improve your analytical skills and your ability to use abstract ways to formulate problem

by w1kke 15y ago

Calculus is in your curriculum to train your way of thought. Namely to improve your analytical skills and your ability to use abstract ways to formulate problems. You will need that plenty in real time programming.

tonyarkles 15y ago
I absolutely agree. We didn't have a Computer Engineering programme when I went through school, instead I ended up taking a 4-year Electrical Engineering programme and a special "take all of the Computer Science credits of a 4 year degree, without all of the Arts electives" programme on top of it (5 years total, by taking a ridiculous number of classes). Now I'm just wrapping up an M.Sc. programme in Computer Science. Because of the combined programme, I ended up taking 4 calculus classes and a linear algebra class. Additionally, there were some others that were thinly veiled statistics classes (digital communication = gaussian statistics). Add in some signal processing (signals & systems, DSP I, DSP II), an introductory logic course (from computer science), and two algorithms courses. Do I use all of these in my day-to-day work? No. I'm mostly doing web and mobile apps these days (fun, good money, very low probability of killing anyone). Do the concepts I learned through both programmes influence my thought patterns every day? Absolutely! Do I get to randomly pull some of this stuff out of my hat and apply them? Yes, and it amazes people. Day-to-day, I probably use the linear algebra and algorithms stuff most frequently (the guys down the hall are doing games programming and sometimes ask me questions). Next up is probably numerical methods stuff, but that's mostly because of a cool project we did on contract a few months ago (non-linear least squares, mmmmm). I occasionally get to use the signal processing stuff, we did an audio-related project a few months ago, and more recently I wrote a simple high-pass filter so that we could detect when someone was shaking their iOS device quickly :D. Really, there's two important reasons to take all of this stuff: it definitely shapes your thought process, and it's very handy to have this stuff in your toolbox (you never know when you'll need it).
- belial 15y ago
  What an intelligent reply! I'm interested in knowing what particular book would you recommend for someone who is a Computer Science graduate and planning to enhance his mathematical skills in linear algebra? If there is more than one, I'll be glad to get them all... So, any suggestions?

by w1kke 15y ago

tonyarkles 15y ago

I absolutely agree. We didn't have a Computer Engineering programme when I went through school, instead I ended up taking a 4-year Electrical Engineering programme and a special "take all of the Computer Science credits of a 4 year degree, without all of the Arts electives" programme on top of it (5 years total, by taking a ridiculous number of classes). Now I'm just wrapping up an M.Sc. programme in Computer Science. Because of the combined programme, I ended up taking 4 calculus classes and a linear algebra class. Additionally, there were some others that were thinly veiled statistics classes (digital communication = gaussian statistics). Add in some signal processing (signals & systems, DSP I, DSP II), an introductory logic course (from computer science), and two algorithms courses. Do I use all of these in my day-to-day work? No. I'm mostly doing web and mobile apps these days (fun, good money, very low probability of killing anyone). Do the concepts I learned through both programmes influence my thought patterns every day? Absolutely! Do I get to randomly pull some of this stuff out of my hat and apply them? Yes, and it amazes people. Day-to-day, I probably use the linear algebra and algorithms stuff most frequently (the guys down the hall are doing games programming and sometimes ask me questions). Next up is probably numerical methods stuff, but that's mostly because of a cool project we did on contract a few months ago (non-linear least squares, mmmmm). I occasionally get to use the signal processing stuff, we did an audio-related project a few months ago, and more recently I wrote a simple high-pass filter so that we could detect when someone was shaking their iOS device quickly :D. Really, there's two important reasons to take all of this stuff: it definitely shapes your thought process, and it's very handy to have this stuff in your toolbox (you never know when you'll need it).

belial 15y ago
What an intelligent reply! I'm interested in knowing what particular book would you recommend for someone who is a Computer Science graduate and planning to enhance his mathematical skills in linear algebra? If there is more than one, I'll be glad to get them all... So, any suggestions?