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Ask Hacker News: CS-related math after college
What series of math courses/books do you recommend to the aspiring programmer already graduated from college?
I'm a professional programmer and I realized a few years ago that the way I was doing things was totally stupid. So I've been slowly working my way up, learned Rails, now going through SICP, with PAIP coming up next.
But I also understand that a lot of math is involved that I never took. Don't get me wrong, I'm reasonably good at math, and took linear algebra and econometrics for fun, but I don't know what to read on my own and in what order for application to CS. The department websites I've looked at suggest four years of Java and maybe one math-ish algorithms class, but I don't think that's the answer.
I'd appreciate your help. Thanks.
- manvsmachine 19y agoI asked a similar question a little while ago, here's what I got: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78315 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78315
- iamelgringo 19y agoBest answer to your question that I've ever read: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers... And, another good article to spur you on: http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/math-every-day http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/math-every-day
- tjr 19y agoYou might enjoy "Concrete Mathematics" by Don Knuth, et al. I opine that graph theory and probability are typically-useful branches of math for programmers to study.
- asolove 19y agoThanks everyone, those answered it quite well.