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People who are good at algebra aren’t necessarily good at calculus/analysis and vice versa. It sounds perfectly reasonable that someone might struggle with the
by Sharlin 2y ago
People who are good at algebra aren’t necessarily good at calculus/analysis and vice versa. It sounds perfectly reasonable that someone might struggle with the continuous FT (integrals, brrh!) but grok the discrete version perfectly well (just a sum of basis functions).
- code_biologist 2y agoHeh, my college signals courses first taught continuous time systems then focused on discrete time in a follow-up course. They assumed you knew enough calculus at the start that Laplace transforms wouldn't be a huge hurdle, even if you hadn't seen them before. Discrete time / Z-transform was treated as more "advanced". But I agree, I've done enough integrals for a lifetime!
- Sharlin 2y agoComputer scientists and programmers live in an inherently discrete world where there’s algebra everywhere you look but very little calculus outside certain niches. I’m reminded of the Feynman and the Connection Machine story [1] where he ended up analyzing some complex binary circuits in terms of differential equations because as a physicist he lived and breathed the continuum – unlike his computer engineer coworkers! [1] https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin...