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I would love to see how far you can develop combinatorics or information theory without using any calculus. Even in combinatorics "continuous math" has been use

by stiff 12y ago

I would love to see how far you can develop combinatorics or information theory without using any calculus. Even in combinatorics "continuous math" has been used for centuries already for difficult problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_combinatorics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_combinatorics

sanxiyn 12y ago
Coding theory is largely developed without any calculus.
- lambdaphage 12y ago
  I've posted this elsewhere already, but that's just not true: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/
- leephillips 12y ago
  I don't think so. It's based on information theory, which was based on the concepts of thermodynamics. Everything in thermodynamics, even temperature, is defined as a partial derivative. So the root concepts of coding theory can not even be expressed without the language of calculus.
- dkural 12y ago
  This is simply not true. Coding theory uses a bunch of calculus to prove theorems, especially where probability is involved.
Dewie 12y ago
That might well be for sufficiently advanced combinatorics or information theory. But I have done just fine without calculus tools in my computer science degree (not purely computer science or math, though), which I'll be starting on the fifth year of this fall. This is isn't to say that you don't need calculus in computer science; it is to say that you don't seem to need calculus for basic and introductory computer science courses, and things related to that; discrete math has been much more relecant. In spite of that, my department has calculus as its math course (you can also take stats in parallell), while discrete math is in the second semester. They also advice students that haven't taken the most advanced math in high school against taking the most theoretical/mathematical computer science degree. This was due to the calculus course building on that high school math experience. But then the discrete math course - which is much more directly relevant - does not build much or at all on calculus, and you can do just fine without the most advanced high school math in that course. Maybe the only thing you'll suffer from is having a bit less mathematical maturity at the offset. But since they start with calculus, they discourage people like me who, while not having had the most advanced calculus (or pre-calculus) in high school from taking a more math-heavy degree, even though I've found to like a lot of the math involved in some subfields of computer science!

by stiff 12y ago

sanxiyn 12y ago

Coding theory is largely developed without any calculus.

lambdaphage 12y ago
I've posted this elsewhere already, but that's just not true: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/
leephillips 12y ago
I don't think so. It's based on information theory, which was based on the concepts of thermodynamics. Everything in thermodynamics, even temperature, is defined as a partial derivative. So the root concepts of coding theory can not even be expressed without the language of calculus.
dkural 12y ago
This is simply not true. Coding theory uses a bunch of calculus to prove theorems, especially where probability is involved.

Dewie 12y ago

That might well be for sufficiently advanced combinatorics or information theory. But I have done just fine without calculus tools in my computer science degree (not purely computer science or math, though), which I'll be starting on the fifth year of this fall. This is isn't to say that you don't need calculus in computer science; it is to say that you don't seem to need calculus for basic and introductory computer science courses, and things related to that; discrete math has been much more relecant. In spite of that, my department has calculus as its math course (you can also take stats in parallell), while discrete math is in the second semester. They also advice students that haven't taken the most advanced math in high school against taking the most theoretical/mathematical computer science degree. This was due to the calculus course building on that high school math experience. But then the discrete math course - which is much more directly relevant - does not build much or at all on calculus, and you can do just fine without the most advanced high school math in that course. Maybe the only thing you'll suffer from is having a bit less mathematical maturity at the offset. But since they start with calculus, they discourage people like me who, while not having had the most advanced calculus (or pre-calculus) in high school from taking a more math-heavy degree, even though I've found to like a lot of the math involved in some subfields of computer science!