Is Math necessary in today's world?

mrjcurtis said:

Math is a must. how else can you count your cash?

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That is not Math. Math does not equal counting and calculating.

BrianKade001 said:

And, Maths is important in our life. However, I don't consider stuffs like integration and differentiation have any value in our day-to-day life, so students should have choice to skip them.

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Guess what, "differentiation" is one of the topics I need to learn for my summer exams. Just one, out of the many complicated ones out there which I have zero knowledge of because I was avoiding the subject altogether.

Well, you mentioned a billing system. Let's just say I would not hire a developer to program a system of monetary exchange if he was not proficient in math.

I use math in everything from the most basic website design to my automated stock selection systems.

Making a social network? Your client may want something like Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm. You need a strong grasp of math for that.

Dating website? Need to develop an algorithm that can accurately pair people together.

There is a reason they teach high level abstract math in computer science curriculum, especially when dealing with vectors, matrices, memory management, and time complexities, which are present in a myriad well-designed systems.

Also, people are saying you just need to know how to add, subtract, etc, and while those basic operations may be all you need to calculate something in a given situation, there is a huge difference between knowing the operations and knowing how to solve a problem.

An example is someone who knows how to add and subtract but doesn't know how to center a photo frame on the wall. What if that frame has one anchor point? Two anchor points? How do you adapt your algorithm to calculate where to drill into the wall? Some people can easily do math but can't solve the simplest problems such as these. That's where an education in logical and mathematical processes is useful.

BrianKade001 said:

And, Maths is important in our life. However, I don't consider stuffs like integration and differentiation have any value in our day-to-day life, so students should have choice to skip them.

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Are you sure? Where do you live? In high school in Sweden you get to study what you want but you choose a program and you must study all its courses and in uni, it's all up to you register yourself for the courses but you are presented what is required to acquire a degree. So nothing is forced upon you here, certain things can be boring but that's in every subject, you don't like exactly everything.

But I can tell you, discrete mathematics is the most boring shit. Too much text and too many symbols.

Math is extremely important. I dont think it's nessecary to be able to do anything in your brain, but to get the logic that math includes. It's usable for almost every single task.

Try to break down the seemingly complex problems to several simple parts. You'll discover that you are no dummy in maths.

Yes, math is important. For programming, nearly everything I have done has been discrete math. In fact with the odd exception of when I am working on DSPs or signal processing, everything I do involves discrete math.

Math is an interesting subject in that everyone has a "breaking point" so to speak; math is "fun" for a lot of people until it no longer makes intuitive sense and they have to start actually working to understand it. Some people love to run around shouting how easy math is - don't listen to them. Everything is easy if you never try anything involving more than an arbitrary level of complexity.

As someone who has done a lot of math (seriously, a metric fuck-ton) my advice is to buy a Cramster/Chegg account and just start doing problems, checking your answers every step of the way. Getting instant feedback on whether I was doing a problem right or not made a huge difference for me, conceptually and grade-wise. Nothing irritated me more than professors assigning homework and not posting answers, or waiting four weeks to get the assignment back only to figure out that I had been doing something totally wrong. And of course, whatever I had been doing wrong was usually a foundational concept so everything else I had been doing for the last month was also wrong.

depends on your business model
its relative

Like one wise man said: "Like would be a mistake without math"

Simply math is the code of life.

ShadeDream said:

Do you by any chance remember which book it was?

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My memory is bad, but I got 2 math books. Dont recall it being either, but fuzzy memory can do that.

The first is "Basic mathematics with applications to science and technology - Second edition" . Authors include Haym Kruglak, John T. Moore and Ramon Mata-toledo.
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Boo...7&searchurl=ds=30&isbn=0070371326&n=100121501

Second: "No nonsense knowledge - Mathematics made simple" by Thomas Cusick.
http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780767915380&view=print


When my brother is off work I'll ask him to see if he has the one I'm thinking of.

I hate math too. all I need is:

+
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How can someone who has the knowledge of millions of people at their disposal remain stupid? You have Google as your bitch to learn as much as possible and yet this seems more of a case of laziness. You have X hours per day to rinse and repeat what you learn, so get your bookmarks ready and start learning.

therage said:

How can someone who has the knowledge of millions of people at their disposal remain stupid? You have Google as your bitch to learn as much as possible and yet this seems more of a case of laziness. You have X hours per day to rinse and repeat what you learn, so get your bookmarks ready and start learning.

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Just because you have the means to learn doesn't mean you should or can. Know everything, master nothing. Master one thing, know little. You can't do both. Also, alot of people on the internet think they know exactly how to do something or what something is and are wrong. It's not always correct.


The only place I'd trust (besides dedicated math sites) would be Khan Academy.

Zapdos said:

Know everything, master nothing. Master one thing, know little. You can't do both.

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Unless you master the Universe in which case you know everything by definition

jazzc said:

Unless you master the Universe in which case you know everything by definition

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And how likely is that? lol

According to the topic of this thread, I would say math is not necessary in todays world , but it makes your life a lot easier.

Those who are good at maths usually have flexible mind what is a huge advantage in nowadays world and makes their life a lot more fun and valuable.

jazzc said:

Unless you master the Universe in which case you know everything by definition

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That works. It's been accomplished by three already!

Misleading thread title.

Math will make it easier to become a programmer.

If there's anything in this world that is 100% absolutely true all of the time, it's mathematics.