3 ms·
Ages ago, when I was in college, a "numerical methods" course was more or less obligatory... has that changed? Anyway, toying with a slide rule is a fun way of
by Pinus 3y ago
Ages ago, when I was in college, a "numerical methods" course was more or less obligatory... has that changed?
Anyway, toying with a slide rule is a fun way of making these things very obvious, because you are essentially working with something like 3-digit floating point. When you find yourself subtracting 1.234 from 1.235, but you know that both the "4" and the "5" are really fuzzy around the edges, it becomes obvious that the resulting 0.001 does not really mean much. Similarly, when you take 1.234e+6 (again with a really fuzzy "4") and add 2, you realize that 1.234002e+6 is not really a sane answer.
- bee_rider 3y agoI assume it depends on the department. CS students are afraid of non-integer values, engineering students are afraid of codes longer than 200 lines. Just kidding, mostly. I do somewhat wonder if numerical methods have suffered from their success; like everybody uses LAPACK via Numpy but understanding it under the hood, that job always belongs to the next department over wherever you are, haha.
- jmrm 3y agoAFAIK in Europe numerical methods is mandatory in most Telco/EE degrees, but not in CS/SWE. The opposite happens with discrete maths btw
- anthk 3y agoHere in Spain if you can't grasp numerical methods in CS you can't even think on earning a degree.
- rerdavies 3y agoHere in Canada, CS is part of the Math Department at the University of Waterloo, but part of the Philosophy Department at University of Toronto. Waterloo graduates take a Numerical Methods course in second year. I fear for the philosophers.
- ArcticLandfall 3y agoHow floats work is a non-trivial part of my 3rd semester CS course (Computer Architecture) in the US, I'd imagine the same applies to every other good college.