How much does mathematical knowledge really matter in programming?

how much does mathematical knowledge really matter in programming?

Depends what you're programming.

You are asking: how athletic you have to be to play sports.

To answer that: if you want to be in Olympics, very athletic. If you want to play basketball in your backyard, not very athletic.

However the demand for people playing sports is so high right now, that even people who can play basketball in their backyard can get paid to play.

>Depends what you're programming.

This, really. We need to break down programming into categories or "industries".

>Mathematical Research

Here is where you need the highest knowlede of mathematics, obviously. You would be literally programming mathematics.

>Simulation

Here you need less knowledge but still a lot. A high level of statistics, calculus, probability theory, etc. Also specifically physics depending on the project but I consider physics to be a subset of calculus and that's already there.

>Mathematics tools programming

This is a field I have the luxury of having first hand experience on but the level of mathematics is not too high. Some understanding of arithmetic, elementary number theory, elementary algebra, statistics and algorithms will be needed. Maybe conside it medium level mathematics.

>General application programming

Understand arithmetic and algebra and you are good to go.

Nothing really beyond basic algebra, its more problem solving and creative thinking and applying the basic mathematical stuff you know into code.

Just know your High School math and you're good to go


t. guy with Masters degree in software engineering

Hi. I was wondering if you might help me by telling me how you got to where you are? I am going to college in 1.5 years from now. I want to learn to program well before that. I will put in the time. How do I start? I know that I want to learn mostly JS and Python, and maybe R. I live in a very shit anti-intellectual and de-industrialized area of the US where no one knows anything about programming that I have access to. How should I start? I go online and just get overwhelmed by the hundreds of book suggestions and methods and MOOCs and courses etc especially since I have no structure. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

like you need to be fully proficient at counting. a solid understanding of greater than/less than symbols is also key.

Bumping for this. Any help or suggestions, sci?

Learn a strict language like C or Java first. If it's your first time learning a language, get comfortable with control structures or for loops, if-else, variables and types. Then OOP. Then datastructures and algorithms. Should take you less than 1 month if you're autistic enough. Don't recommend learning html+JS until are familiar with objects

that's correct
that's bullshit

There's no perfect course of action from "high schooler interested in computers" to "software engineer with a masters"

It depends on your experience and interests. Just set yourself a simple coding goal and try to solve it creatively. You can work through all the maths textbooks in the world but if you never run into coding problems that actually require mathematical understanding, you'll never find out why the maths was important in the first place, or what you should study next.

Well...Basically.

>Basic algebra matters A LOT

>Advanced maths don't matter too much

You have to be really good at the "easier" stuff (add, detract, multiply, divide, etc), which honestly has fucked my ability to learn programming for years. But if you are good with them and some other basic concepts, you'll be good, you don't need to be an expert on formulas and equations and other shit that I don't even know the name of unless you are working on things that are specifically about that.

Generally yes but it depends what you're working on. You'd want someone with good mathematical knowledge to program a missile guidance system but to make social media app, not really. It's not limited to something like that though, if you were making a 3D modeling program or image editing program, you will need maths. Basically if you're doing anything above shit-tier bloat le flavour of the month general application programming. Then you need good mathematical knowledge.

Hi. Thank you for your reply. I'm just looking for advice on the best way to start. Do you have any suggestions for that? I want to cover the grounds well from the get go. Thanks.

For programming ? You just need logics and ultra basic math.

Not OP. But I have the same question. Can you help sci?

Python. Ignore retards telling you to start with LISP/C/Haskell, you'll get to those languages later.

depends on what you want to program and how rigorously you want to prove the correctness of your programs. if you want to be a career programmer, then I can assure you that proving the correctness of your programs is pointless unless your programs are safety-critical or performance intensive and if you want to get anything done then you will often have to accept a superficial understanding of the underlying code or mathematics in favor of getting work done, unless that work requires a unique or novel solution.

If you want to manage other programmers directly, then you will often be highly valued for your social skils and ability to take UML diagrams from the person who manages you and throw it in the garbage and piss on it and then light it on fire because if you don't then the triple E boys and I will come over there and slap your shit.

If you do something that specifically deals with mathematics (i.e. simulations, numerical stuff, statistics etc) then of course a lot. In any other case, less and less. Reasons:

>More and more of the heavy shit is moved into some libraries in the background. All you really do is read up the API and plug and play.
>For most shit we have way more processing power than we need. Twenty years ago your algorithm may have taken 2 seconds or 4 minutes depending on optimization. These days, the same algorithm takes either 1 ms or 120 ms depending on optimization, ergo: It doesn't fucking matter.
>In case you really need to implement complicated stuff, there's a neat way and four papers about them and 23 blog entries on how to do it for dummies, and 563 stackoverflow posts in case something might not be working around already.

Only a Pajeet would ask such a dumb question

try "learning python the hard way" teaches you the basics of python, by the end of it you have the tools to go and learn by yourself.

once you have got your feet wet try do some of the project euler exercises.

some people hate LPTHW but i think its a good starting point, the book gives you some code, explains what each thing does, builds your confidence up

don't learn C first. most of the people who use C are Electrical Engineers writing code to talk to hardware, and EE's learn matlab first

if you want to learn abit of math, learn about digital logic

there's a few lectures online made by some google guys that are 2-3 hours long that explain python from the bottom up

merry christmas senpai

literally doesnt

you just need to know how it is implemented