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What Math do You Use?
e_lehman asks: "I've been associated with MIT's introductory 'Mathematics for Computer Science' course for a number of years. The course has emphasized different topics in different years: logical foundations, proofs, probability, combinatorics, etc. But this is at the whim of instructors. What mathematical topics should we be teaching to budding computer scientists? What mathematics do you actually use or need, working in the computer industry? Here are some candidates: boolean logic, graphs, number theory, combinatorics, proofs, set theory, relations and functions, approximation methods, solving recurrences, generating functions, analysis of state machines, asymptotic analysis, and addition of small integers."
I know it is supposed to be an academic study, but this is just going to be too demanding. Where could you even find people qualified to teach such exotic stuff?
After 40 years using math for EVERYTHING in my day to day life, including my professional life, I'm amazed at what is most useful.
The fact is that, after all this time, the most useful and frequently used math isn't algebra, or geometry or calculous, or statistics. The amazing thing is that most of the math is on my fingers.
* Finite State Machines
* Graph Theory
* Numerical Analysis
Hey! I've never had to do that sort of thinking with Windows Visual Basic
Why just the other day, I was getting stuck declaring a variable, and was just sitting there pondering, and all of a sudden this really smart paper-clip comes up and says "It looks like you're defining a variable!" - He was really helpfull!
Try VB.NET and you be a much more productive prorammer with only 5% of all that difficult thinking!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.