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I agree with your points so much. I am a applied Maths student (currently) and when looking for internships I noticed 80% of them are for CS related stuff. Ima

by 1971genocide 12y ago

I agree with your points so much. I am a applied Maths student (currently) and when looking for internships I noticed 80% of them are for CS related stuff. Imagine being me ( 19 years old ), offered a 15K/year job in my first year in university. My best job up until then was cleaning the floor at a mall. I have studied insane amount of mathematics all my life ( proofs after proofs ), how much longer do I need to wait until I am able to something of value in society ? Compared that to the amazing 14 weeks internship I did at a startup churning out frontend javascript. Those 14 weeks were the best weeks of my life, I never felt more confident and of value. My depression vanished overnight, I found a new aim in life, I treated coding the same way nations treat nuclear weapons. I learnt more things of value in those 14 weeks then I did in the previous 19 years, I didn't need to set up an alarm clock to wake up in the morning. There was no hand holding, because I was getting paid. I spent the rest of my waking hour churing code with no need for external motivation. I got really angry at society for misleading me for such a long time because of how easy it was for me to do something useful, finally. I see my friends struggling with the same problems and feel so much of young ppl's time is wasted, In my mind its a crime. I think as always mathematicians fail to grasp the human side of the argument, why are they complaining about lack of interest in statistics ? its their own fault this problem exists. There is no Neil Degrasse Tyson for statistics, there is no mark zuckerberg for stats, you don't need to hire a PR department. Just show us the wonderful magic that you speak of and we are smart enough to figure out why we should dedicate our lives to your cause. This is why if some statistical axiom/theory doesn't have a CS applied part I became really skeptical of doing that course.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>I think as always mathematicians fail to grasp the human side of the argument, why are they complaining about lack of interest in statistics ? its their own fault this problem exists. There is no Neil Degrasse Tyson for statistics, there is no mark zuckerberg for stats, you don't need to hire a PR department. Just show us the wonderful magic that you speak of and we are smart enough to figure out why we should dedicate our lives to your cause. It doesn't help that textbooks and course materials in mathematics sometimes appear to be designed for working mathematicians more than for students, with a lot of outright hostility towards the very concept of students learning maths. (I acknowledge that this comes from Math professors hating the time they spend teaching STEM weed-out courses, but I still think that overall, Mathematics is much worse than even theoretical computer science at avoiding things like Notation Proliferation Syndrome and Greek Letter Syndrome that make it artificially hard to learn. Explain the rigor, yes, but also explain the meaning and the concepts such that a decent learner should understand them well enough to reconstruct the rigorous parts on-the-fly as he or she needs.)
- sreya 12y ago
  Agreed but also easier said than done
- bgilroy26 12y ago
  While it must be a factor, I don't think weariness from teaching intro courses is the main reason we don't see better math books. I think it is genuinely difficult to write engaging texts that are sufficiently rigorous and retrain teachers in the methods that go along with them and drum up support among administrative types. Not that it's impossible, but it is very challenging.
- 1971genocide 12y ago
  Yeah, I use this book. Its the most clear book I have ever read for 1-2 year applied Mathematics. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-K-Stroud/dp/1403942463 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-K-Stroud/dp/... Theoretical Computer Science is great in my opinion. Many mathematics ppl complain about external factors, I agree there may be many external factors but there are also a bucketload of problems with mathematics itself that the are in a position to solve. I am convinced that you cannot do applied mathematics without computers. An anecdotal example: I have been solving differential equations since I was 15 and only when I tried creating mathematical models for self-driving cars for my CS assignments did I realize that I have no clue what I understood. I spent 5 years just manipulating algebra which python can do with one line of code in Sympy.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>I think as always mathematicians fail to grasp the human side of the argument, why are they complaining about lack of interest in statistics ? its their own fault this problem exists. There is no Neil Degrasse Tyson for statistics, there is no mark zuckerberg for stats, you don't need to hire a PR department. Just show us the wonderful magic that you speak of and we are smart enough to figure out why we should dedicate our lives to your cause. It doesn't help that textbooks and course materials in mathematics sometimes appear to be designed for working mathematicians more than for students, with a lot of outright hostility towards the very concept of students learning maths. (I acknowledge that this comes from Math professors hating the time they spend teaching STEM weed-out courses, but I still think that overall, Mathematics is much worse than even theoretical computer science at avoiding things like Notation Proliferation Syndrome and Greek Letter Syndrome that make it artificially hard to learn. Explain the rigor, yes, but also explain the meaning and the concepts such that a decent learner should understand them well enough to reconstruct the rigorous parts on-the-fly as he or she needs.)

sreya 12y ago
Agreed but also easier said than done
bgilroy26 12y ago
While it must be a factor, I don't think weariness from teaching intro courses is the main reason we don't see better math books. I think it is genuinely difficult to write engaging texts that are sufficiently rigorous and retrain teachers in the methods that go along with them and drum up support among administrative types. Not that it's impossible, but it is very challenging.
1971genocide 12y ago
Yeah, I use this book. Its the most clear book I have ever read for 1-2 year applied Mathematics. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-K-Stroud/dp/1403942463 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-K-Stroud/dp/... Theoretical Computer Science is great in my opinion. Many mathematics ppl complain about external factors, I agree there may be many external factors but there are also a bucketload of problems with mathematics itself that the are in a position to solve. I am convinced that you cannot do applied mathematics without computers. An anecdotal example: I have been solving differential equations since I was 15 and only when I tried creating mathematical models for self-driving cars for my CS assignments did I realize that I have no clue what I understood. I spent 5 years just manipulating algebra which python can do with one line of code in Sympy.