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Unless you're working on computer graphics, there's no math in programming / IT...
by Rod 17y ago
Unless you're working on computer graphics, there's no math in programming / IT...
- rglovejoy 17y agoEvidently, you have never taken a class in algorithms.
- Rod 17y agoO(log(n)) and such stuff is not exactly algebraic or differential geometry, buddy...
- rglovejoy 17y agoIt's a different field of math. See http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-046JFall-2005/CourseHome/index.htm http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute... And I'm not your buddy, guy.
- Rod 17y agoDude, chill out, will ya?! Go to a math department and claim that algorithms & complexity is math and you will get lynched by some topologist. Most of EE & CS is quantitative, but it's not exactly math, in the sense that it's not formal. Physics is quantitative, for instance, but it's not math either.
- ninguem2 17y agoYou are splitting hairs. The logical reasoning underpinning theoretical CS is the same as that of Mathematics. Whether or not this has any bearing on the gender imbalance problem, I don't know, but at the level of this discussion, CS is Math.
- Rod 17y agoI totally agree!!! But let us NOT forget that the topic being discussed is the lack of women in programming & IT, not in CS or Math! I said there's no math in programming, which is not entirely accurate because some algorithms and stuff can be considered math. But still, let us keep in mind that HN is populated with über-hackers, the kind of people who are genuinely intelectually curious and learn stuff on their own. Thus, we discuss AI, ML and NLP here on HN often. But let us keep in mind that 90% or more of the programmers in this world are coding monkeys who don't care about elegant code and intellectual pursuits, they care about a pay check and going home before 19:00. Am I wrong?
- blackguardx 17y agoEE uses no math? Since when?
- Rod 17y agoControl Systems, Communications and Signal Processing is quite Math-intensive. But is Electronics and Photonics Math? I doubt it. I would say that EE is either Applied Math or Applied Physics. For instance, in coding one uses Galois theory, but that is Math. The goal of an EE is not to prove theorems but to build systems and circuits. Sometimes one needs to prove theorems, but then one is doing Math, not EE. By the way, I am a graduate student in EE. Feel free to bash me ;-)
- grandalf 17y agohah this thread has tons of testosterone in it... I'm waiting for the word "bro"...
- rglovejoy 17y agoI guess the South Park quote was a little obscure... B^)
- Rod 17y agoSouth Park? What do you mean? I don't quote SP. I never watched it.
- natrius 17y agoOr natural language processing, machine learning, information retrieval, artificial intelligence... The things that most programmers do on a regular basis don't require much math, but most programmers don't do graphics either.
- Rod 17y agoYou're totally right. We could go on discussing what is Math and what is not. Some of what you have listed would probably fall under the category of "Theoretical Computer Science", which is mostly Discrete Math. Of course, the pedantic mathematicians don't want to label it as Math because they're too in love with the continuous math paradigm. In any case, most programmers build GUI's and play with sockets and stuff, they don't do AI, graphics nor ML. In any case, who cares? It's not math that keeps women out, and I don't care if there are no women in programming...
- natrius 17y agoI intentionally listed fields that require a strong grasp of probability, not just discrete math.
- Rod 17y agoML uses a lot of probability and optimization. AI uses graphs and stuff. But then, electronics uses some stuff from solid state physics... but is it physics!? Some fields are inherently more "applied" and detached from what a purist would call "math". In any case, who cares? Those are just labels...