4 ms·
How you can use R without knowing calculus? Why would you even turn to R if you didn’t have a calculus problem to solve?
by wwarner 3y ago
How you can use R without knowing calculus? Why would you even turn to R if you didn’t have a calculus problem to solve?
- roflyear 3y agoYou don't use calc much when you use R, unless you're working on a problem that involves calculus, which isn't many problems, usually? R is usually used to do data stuffs in my experience. Like, "take in this data from this CSV, and do these manipulations" which may involve math but not often calculus.
- wwarner 3y agoI am totally for software assisted math. Math isn’t just pencil on paper, and it isn’t only proof, and it’s great to talk about over beers.
- gmadsen 3y agousing those "data stuffs" are usually based on calculus. Statistics and probability are both defined in terms of calculus. calculus is the most basic of mathematical machinery, that it is essentially a requirement to do anything else.
- thfuran 3y agoYou're kind of arguing that you can't walk without studying kinematics.
- gmadsen 3y agoim not though. I don't think you need to know measure theory and understand how to formalize probability in terms of sigma algebras to do professional stats. But I would be very skeptical of a professional data scientist that doesn't understand things like derivative, integral, limit on an intuitive level. I don't know how you would understand distributions without that knowledge
- roflyear 3y agoR is not exclusive to professional data scientists.
- m463 3y agoAre probability and statistics really practically based on calculus? Most math curriculums do not have a calculus requirement to take statistics.
- wwarner 3y agorho(x) is the probability density function, and it better sum up to 1 for all possible values of x.
- gmadsen 3y agofor actual understanding, yes it is. The most basic important results, the law of large numbers, and the central limit theorem both require calculus to understand. if you make a class without calculus, it is essentially just a bag of tricks and surface level understanding
- roflyear 3y agoSure thing, you may be calling a function that does some regression or something, but you aren't "doing calculus" when you are programming that in R.