Ask Slashdot: How Many of You Actually Use Math?

An anonymous reader writes with a question that makes a good follow-on to the claim that mathematics requirements in U.S. schools unnecessarily limit students' educational choices: "I'm a high school student who is interested in a career in a computer science or game development related position. I've been told by teachers and parents that math classes are a must for any technology related career. I've been dabbling around Unity3D and OGRE for about two years now and have been programming for longer than that, but I've never had to use any math beyond trigonometry (which I took as a Freshman). This makes me wonder: will I actually use calculus and above, or is it just a popular idea that you need to be a mathematician in order to program? What are your experiences?"

Comments

Field dependent requirement

[icebike]

The bulk of programming jobs have nothing at all to do with math beyond the high school level.
Its mostly counting beans and keeping records. Really, it is.

Gaming, (image rendering and manipulation), statistics, and rocket science are a few of the obvious areas that come to mind where more advanced maths may be necessary. Even these fields have packages available to do the heavy lifting once you figure out what it is that you want to do. Knowing what to do the key. This kind of programming constitutes about 1% of the available jobs and 98% of the chest thumping on slashdot.

Re:Field dependent requirement

[fredprado]

On the other hand, almost all IT jobs require at the very least a good part of high school math, especially logic, algebra, arithmetics and combinatory analysis.

Re:Field dependent requirement

[bannable]

I haven't seen any clear way to calculate say an integral using something like c++ or c#.

Calculus is a study of continuous mathematics. C, C++, and every (?) other programming language work on principles of discrete mathematics, which is why you can read all about strange calculations with floating point variables. So, what you've seen is only natural.

My understanding of it is that most colleges/universities do not even consider offering discrete mathematic courses until at least Calculus 2 is completed, and in some places not for a year after even that.

Re:Field dependent requirement

[FranTaylor]

I've yet to see calculus applied by any programming.

How does your laptop computer calculate remaining battery life?

How does your browser calculate remaining download time?

How does your tablet distinguish between gestures?

"I'm an experienced automobile driver and I don't think that pistons and piston rings exist, because I have never seen them."

Re:Field dependent requirement

[mcelrath]

You've just reduced computer science to monkeys plugging the right wire into the right socket. 1,000,000 such monkeys can reproduce the collected works of Kernighan and Richie.

Without math you'll be unable to:

1. Understand big-O algorithm analysis
2. Analyze the output of a profiler
3. Understand any encryption algorithm
4. Work on any data analysis (every application has some element of statistics -- even if it's in the app's own internal call graph)

If you cannot do those things, I wouldn't call you a programmer, I'd call you a monkey.

This ongoing discussion about lack of math is ludicrous. Math is one of those things where if you don't know it, you can't see what it's for, and if you know it, you can't imagine a world without it. You can always argue you don't need knowledge, and if you're nothing but a device for turning food into poop then that's true, but those with knowledge will rule you. EVERY single thing in the world comes down to math. The monkeys don't know that, and they shouldn't program computers. Every single job you can think of can be improved by judicious application of a little math in the right places, and those who can will get ahead.

To be specific, take combinatorics, and as much statistics as you can get your hands on. That in my opinion is the bare minimum for life as a human being. Then you can understand poker odds, political polls and elections, and you'll know enough to not blow your money on lottery tickets. For programming or any scientific/engineering field, you'll also need linear algebra and calculus. If you're smart enough to realize that you don't live in 1-dimensional world, continue with vector calculus and complex analysis, and laugh as everyone around you tries to do linear regression on everything they can find. One or two more courses out of interest and you'll have a math major.

Re:Field dependent requirement

[Tough Love]

Just as one example, as a game programmer your ability to implement, say, Newtonian iteration would likely make a difference in your salary ask by a factor of two. Without math skills you are a worker bee, but with strong math... maybe a rock star.

Re:Field dependent requirement

[nahdude812]

Battery charge / discharge rate is not constant over the charge level of the battery. The percentage reported by the battery to the OS is just the voltage reading, which is not truly linear to the actual charge level. It even depends on the load being placed on the battery. See this image (from here).

So sure, you can do a bad job of reporting remaining battery time that way. Or you can do a good job by involving some more advanced mathematics. This is a good example of why math is useful, even if most jobs don't fundamentally require it. Most programmers I know would look at the above chart and declare they have no idea how to deal with that, but it is pretty close to linear, and they know how to write that math, so that's what they'd write, then call it good enough.

You can be a programmer without higher math. But you can be a better programmer with it.

Re:Field dependent requirement

[geekoid]

And with a good concept of math, you can get all those question, plus tell them there likely stock flow, better ways to organize inventory storage, and advance logistics regarding said inventory.

Re:Field dependent requirement

[Immerman]

Yeah, as technical fields go I'd say computer programming is actually one of the *least* mathematically intensive, any engineer or hard science researcher will need calculus far more than you. (Of course if you wish to work in any of those fields you'd better know calculus, your colleagues are unlikely to want to use algebraic baby-talk to communicate basic concepts with you, and frustration leads to hiring someone better qualified)

I would say the biggest value of calculus to programmers is that it's an extension of the mathematical language, and allows you to simplify your thinking considerably. For comparison think of any arithmetic-based physics classes you took compared to any algebra-based physics classes - I'm willing to bet that (assuming you actually had a good understanding of algebra) the algebra-based physics course seemed a lot simpler and more consistent (or alternately covered far more complicated and broadly-applicable topics without being more difficult). If you were to then to learn calculus and take a calculus-based physics class the "simplicity factor" is even higher - rather than hundreds of special-purpose equations to keep track of there's only a dozen or so fundamental equations from which all others flow naturally. Sure, you probably memorize the ones you use frequently, but for the other 10,000 you can derive them from the fundamental equations at any time. More importantly an intuitive understanding of the interrelation of the formulas will allow you better understand the interaction of the physical processes which they describe.

Discrete mathematics is likely to be far more useful to a rank-and-file programmer, but the catch is that mathematicians are unlikely to dumb down the class to teach it using only algebra when the more powerful language of calculus makes the basics easier to discuss as well as opening the door to more advanced concepts. Still, if you don't know calculus and have to opportunity to take a "Discrete math for programmers" or similar algebra-based course, go for it. Just be aware that you're getting a version of the subject similar to the programming coverage in a 100-level "programming for people who don't know where the on switch is" class. Immensely better than nothing, but...

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

graphics programming uses math extensively

[parshimers]

go google quaternions, or rotation matricies
properly understanding these sort of techniques that are used widely in 3D programming applications without having knowledge of linear algebra is damned near impossible

Study math

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if you use it in practice. You'll learn to think critically to solve abstract problems. Don't buy into the hype that you don't need math.

Re:Read More

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow-up:
Math is nothing more than a language that allows the speaker to make very precise statements. If you can't see how this is useful in programming then no-one can help you.

What a piece of work is man...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

You are probably not gonna use what you learned in Huckleberry Finn or History, either.

There's a reason these are taught, and it's not all about pure facts.

Concepts versus skills

[addie]

It's not necessarily the actual math skills that are important - it's the understanding of the concepts behind it that will increase your understanding of any kind of process, job, or task - programming being one of them. Knowing what the area under a curve means is probably more important than knowing how to calculate it.

I don't use calculus or any kind of advanced algebra in my day to day work (in communications, far from programming) but I'm sure glad that I understand the basic concepts, thanks to a first degree in engineering.

Better question

[need4mospd]

How many of you use the problem solving skills that were developed in math class? I may not use math everyday, but I certainly solve complex problems that I'm sure others with less math education would struggle to solve.

High school level programming.

[khasim]

The bulk of programming jobs have nothing at all to do with math beyond the high school level.
Its mostly counting beans and keeping records. Really, it is.

Which is also why there is a lot of high school level code out there.

If you never learn more than you need then you'll never know if you have learned as much as you need.

Learning more math won't always make you a better programmer. But it will show you whether you can do something better than someone who knows less math.

Re:High school level programming.

[fredprado]

And that is also why most programmers can't even choose which sort algorithm they should use, and have no clue about why their SQL queries are taking 100x the resources they should take.

Re:Optimization

[Kiaser Zohsay]

Hear, hear.

You don't necessarily do a lot of math as a programmer, but being able to think like a mathematician will be a great help. General problem solving involves logic and inference, in much the same way as proving theorems does. Some concepts from Discrete Math become so commonplace (decimal to bin,oct,hex,etc) that you hardly even notice them anymore, but will glaze the eyes of a non-programmer. I have also had to explain floating point evilness to more than one accountant.

The most hard-math thing I have done recently in programming was double linear regression to project the time required for a file copy operation to complete. Some quality time with Wikipedia, a couple of pages of algebra, and a couple of days of debugging later, and I had a "time remaining" display that counts down like a clock. Take that, Windows Explorer.