Maybe we shall do a PM for this as I would like to discuss it.
I do nit like doing math, at all. ESPECIALLY ALGEBRA! I do not want to do it and this makes me not willing to think about it. I do not find math enjoyable. It just makes me feel like blah.
im just talking about in general
Maybe because Math taught in schools is just mindless calculations
This might be an exaggeration but sadly it is true to some extent
Especially we learn such pointless stuff that won’t be used realistically and in the real world we would use a calculator. No need for knowing how to do big problems just basic understanding of how to do math .
I agree.
An understanding of more advanced mathematical concepts is very helpful when making programs, which I think you would like to do. For example, in 3D game engines, you'll probably need a basic understanding of how matrices work to perform 3D transformations. And even in 2D, an understanding of trigonometry is very useful.
Well it's a tradition carried from old times. What do I mean by that?
Well back then, say like the late 1800's and beyond, up until the 1970's and 80's, computers (they were invented at around the 1940's so I guess the 1800's doesn't apply?) were expensive. They were from thousands to even MILLIONS of dollars (not adjusted for inflation).
Besides being expensive, they were slow because the computers used mechanical and electromechanical parts like Relays and Vacuum Tubes and Switches, not the faster Silicone Chips and such. The economics didn't make much sense. But then again, I'm a millennial who has useless opinions.
So people would mostly resort to using pen-and-paper math, slide rules, abacuses, etc. Anything that is cheap and can do math people would use.
In fact, most of the technological achievements from the late 1900's like the Concorde Plane, Apollo Moon Landings, etc were designed mostly by pen-and-paper math, slide rules, and cheap tools. I mean, I guess they were also designed through extensive testing and such but that's a different story.
THE POINT IS THAT this is proof to some people that we can still make technological achievements and innovations without digital calculators and such.
Understanding advanced mathematical concepts is different from learning how to do manipulations with symbols and numbers
Not very important but i thought you were a gen Zer. If you were a millenial you'd be at least in your mid/late 20s. Or is calling yourself a millenial part of your self deprecating statement? Though I don't think you make a good argument because this is the 21st century, everyone would rather use a calculator.
Yeah, but I was replying to earthrulerr's reply to you, and it seems, at least to me, that the first sentence of their reply was about how most of the concepts taught in math classes are useless. I guess. Or perhaps I misinterpreted what they meant by "learning pointless stuff".
I am. I just got mixed up between Millenials and Gen Z. I was born from 2000 to 2010. The earlier part of the decade.
Bro what the hell...?
Also I was never arguing. I just stated my own opinion(s). I thought that the reason that people still use pen-and-paper math rather than use a calculator for math is or was because of tradition or it's a carryover. I never agreed or disagreed.
What about hell? I don't mean argument like in a heated unconstructive way. I probably should avoid using that term, because people typically use it to describe heated arguments, and i probably used it wrong. I wonder what to call it then, other than "an opinion on something related to what you said" which is too lengthy.
"What the hell" is slang. It's for when someone is puzzled or mad about someone saying something.
I know. But I don't know which sentence you were puzzled by. you also say afterwards "also, i was never arguing..." which sort of implies you were puzzled by the millenial part and not when i described it as an argument, although i'm not sure why you would be puzzled by that.
Holy crap maybe yall are 5 after all... Maybe im 5... I think everybody here is 5 except bh whos the cool 15 year old
Nah he's probably that 21 year old who graduated college already and has a job in IT.
lol true
The First computer was created in the 1800's contrary to belief and was made by a physicist and a famous poets daughter who was incredible at math I believe. Fact check me please.
Ugh, don't wish that on me!
@earthrulerr Okay, so, algebra 1. (By posting that you've already told us your age to within a few years, but oh well.)
You need to do only as much calculation as you need to understand the ideas. For example, if you've done a bunch of problems of the form
2x−5=7
3x−5=−20
3x+8=2
and then you see a problem like
7−x=−3
If you've been just mechanically getting all the numbers onto the right side of the equation, you may say x=−10 for this problem, which would mean you haven't really understood what the rules for manipulating equations mean.
Or you say x=4, which means you need more work on signed numbers.
But if you get that problem correct, then yeah, there's no need for you to do 50 more just like it.
But anyway, those aren't the fun part of math. The fun part is problems like the following: How many prime numbers are there? (A prime number is a positive integer that's divisible only by itself and 1.) Prove your answer.
People who already know the answer don't jump in. (Looking at you, @pumpkinhead :~) ) This is for @earthrulerr to figure out.
I do agree with this.
(If you want me to answer the mathematical equation let me know because this is what I took from your post, sorry for the 600+ word short essay type thing)
What I find worse is having to do (let me give division for an easy example) 73/32 and alike problems, now long decision is important so I get a few of those 2949/492848 or whatever but in the case where you continue doing these excessively as test fillers (in my words) along with just useless complex ones that solely just take, longer to solve and are annoying. It goes the same with addition (in my experience), subtraction, addition, multiplication, division, pre-algebra, and even Absolute Values! ( -|-4828 | + | 573 | ) x 20. Now this is an exaggerated example but I have seen alike problems. Really I find no point in learning or practicing this because causing pain to the students as in the real world we would either have a calculator or would probably not run into this in most situations.
An old joke one of my old amazing mathematics teachers once told me was, “It’s only important if your going to become a math teacher”. She would especially say this when learning about (I believe it was some sort of number line that to math teachers has two names but to no one else).
Yes, math can be fun. Sometimes it’s the teacher, sometimes it’s what your working on. I especially have enjoyed math around when I learned about Integers and negatives for the first time as I already knew them and I thought they were fun.
Now this is related to math but not our concurrent conversation (/ish).
When I took my online C++ classes our teacher (B.A. or M.A. in CS if I remember + some engineering (mechanical)) had said “Computer science, contrary to belief, does not actually require much math knowledge for the most part of it. While you do need basic knowledge you don’t need to know as much mathematics as you may think.” Which, in my opinion, is (more) partially true because of the fact that certain joints of programming need math therefore it depends on your type. Now because I do not like math but have loved programming since a young age my father always (and still try’s to) say that math is important to become a programmer even for the simplest things. In the past I have conversed with my CS teachers about the significance of math in programming and it was mostly similar answers.
How could math effect me in programming?
If I were to get into web design and game design, math would only be significant in game design for physics and variable related issues. Honestly on my hopes I don’t think it’s important for me to do advanced math. In web design math would only be needed for simple things in my experience therefore web design remains fine.
Out of topic and converse subject:
I was wondering if you know of any good articles or papers on computer science especially in esoteric programming, an example of what I’m looking for is in this beautifully made presentation on Esoteric Programming and Esolangs by Hillel Wayne. I also suggest watching the presentation to anyone who’s interested but I do advise it does contain explicit language as it talks about BrainF and JSF and I believe also PythonF or whatever it’s called (F meaning ****). If there are any good articles or papers on this I would love to read them though. If you also just know any generally good articles to read on programming I would love to read them.
I'm going through your topics backwards...
What to read: You should read the book Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley. It's a really enjoyable and easy read, and even though you asked for articles, each chapter is an article he originally wrote for a magazine for programmers (I think Communications of the ACM but don't quote me) so you can read them separately. They're broadly about writing efficient programs. Along the way he gives some answers to why programming is affected by math, but don't think the whole point of the book is to convince you to love math, or to put up with math, or anything like that.
Programming and math: You don't have to solve equations to write programs. For our high school CS curriculum we specify Algebra 1 as a prerequisite, but only so that students will have seen the ideas of function and variable before. (In the very early days of computing, before they invented the idea of abstraction, programmers did sometimes have to solve equations because they had to work out exactly how many milliseconds it would take to carry out each instruction, in order to know where in memory to put the next instruction. But that was over long before I started programming.)
The kind of math that affects you as a programmer is stuff like understanding why mergesort is faster than insertion sort. And understanding why you're never going to write a program that can automatically debug all your other programs.
(By the way, if your plan is to be a web designer, you are setting your sights too low.)
What your parents and teachers say: So, here's the thing. If your father is really telling you that as a programmer you'll start every day by solving 20 equations as a warmup, that's not true. You don't need much school math to program. (Although, by the time you're looking for a job, most of them will be in Data Science, which does depend pretty heavily on statistics. Also, you guys like to talk about AI, and that also depends a lot on statistics these days.)
But programming is doing math, actual math, not school math. Math is about formal systems: reasoning from a small number of axioms using a small number of rules of inference. And a programming language is a formal system! The kind of reasoning you have to do in order to write and debug a program is exactly what mathematicians do.
The thing that makes (pure) mathematicians different from the rest of us is how much they're willing to go meta. So a couple of sentences back I said math is about proving theorems from axioms. Well, what counts as a proof? How do we know a proof is valid? There's a branch of mathematics called proof theory in which proofs are the objects of analysis, and there are axioms and theorems about proving things. And if you're an applied mathematician, your job is to use math theory to model some actual real-world phenomena. Well, what does it mean for something to be a model of something else? That's the subject of model theory. And so on.
But part of what your father is saying is right: It's not that you have to do math because of the subject of some particular program you write. (Although if you want to be a game programmer, simulating physics is the least of your mathematical worries. Physics is easy. 3-D graphics is hard.) It's that writing a program is a mathematical activity, and if it's really math you hate, rather than school math, then yeah, you'll be banging your head against that no matter what your program is about.
What I want:
Yeah, I want you to tell me how many prime numbers there are! (No fair looking it up.)
About your essay, I think actually your problem in school may be that you like math too much. All those problems about doing computations with absolute values are there because some students need them! Because they don't really know what "absolute value" means. (Go back and read all the definitions y'all have posted in this thread, and try to figure out whether each person does or doesn't understand the idea.) By doing a lot of problems, with luck, they teach themselves. But you get it quickly and so the problems are a burden.
Talk your teacher into letting you skip the boring parts of the homework, by reading a chapter ahead and taking a unit test on the stuff the class hasn't learned yet.