What kind of math do programmers use

Active Oldest Votes. Daniel Auger. I would like to add that I've seen some PhDs in math and physics write horrible code. These skills overlap to an extent but they are separate disciplines. Add a comment. If you don't realize how tiny a KB is compared to a GB you'll be wasting time optimizing things that don't matter. Math major vs math mindset: it's like the difference between knowing all of the physics formulas, and being able to accurately bounce a rubber ball off of a backboard 20 yards away!

I'll add that many good programmers know how to play chess or go :- — xanatos. An awful lot of computer code is basically algebra although you're setting it up for the computer rather than solving it yourself. If you're not totally at home with algebra how can you expect to do a decent job of this?

Mathematical thinking is the key to programming. I am adding my vote to emphasize exactly that. Most programming language constructs that we use on a day to day basis are lifted from math disciplines such as lambda calculus. Show 3 more comments.

Dan Diplo. Finance and accounting aren't that bad, unless you're doing options pricing or something like that. You have a point, Chris, but even with financial applications you are more likely to be implementing formulae than devising them. Mark - True, but I'd say understanding rounding issues is more a question of knowing the correct type to use. You don't need to be good at maths to learn that for instance decimal is better than float for monetary values.

And I don't think a mathematician would automatically realise the correct datatype to use - it's a question of learning. SK-logic: More strictly, everything a computer does is logical. Some of those logic operations are interpreted as math and some people claim logic is a branch of math, much to the indignation of some philosophers. Donal Fellows, the formal logic is a math. And philosophers are anyway recognised for their historical contribution to the mathematics, as well as mathematicians who revenged e.

Show 9 more comments. You do not have to be good at logic to be good at "problem solving". Many, if not most, problems can be solved using heuristics which are in no way related to logic.

Are you sure that you are a good programer? I think it's important to look closely at why you don't like maths. I saw a lot of bad teaching around math. The essence of it is to transform a problem to a known one, then say "solved" without an extra word. But in teaching it's likely to require you to go ahead and re-implement proofs to way lower levels. MaQleod MaQleod 2 2 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 16 16 bronze badges. You'll also need math if you want to do "high level" things like signal processing, machine learning, computer vision, 3D rendering, physics simulations, animations, computational geometry, cryptography and probably many other fields I can't think of right now.

Huge difference. Actually math is not the universal language. Logic is. And Logic is the domain of Philosophers. You only need math per se if you are doing computer science, which is not really programming in the context of a career.

If you hate math, you're going to hate programming. Chris Conway. Maxpm Maxpm 3, 1 1 gold badge 22 22 silver badges 34 34 bronze badges. Mike Hofer Mike Hofer 1 1 gold badge 3 3 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges. I am back in school after 10 years of developing software and I am experiencing the same thing. I find Calculus and Statistics much easier as I can relate most of the concepts to some functionality that I have written over the years.

It's like cheating. It somewhat depends on what exactly you are doing, though it definitely can't hurt. Adam Haile. Chinmay Kanchi. Still it would be possible to be a good programmer without math, however difficult. Garet Claborn Garet Claborn 6 6 silver badges 18 18 bronze badges. Thinking of all values as colors almost makes MORE sense. When you go too far off one end of the spectrum, you wind up on the opposite end Tikhon Jelvis Tikhon Jelvis 5, 1 1 gold badge 22 22 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges.

This is a very hard question to answer and will likely stir up a lot of debate. Yes, definitely. Even run of the mill business programing requires some skill at math. I'd say that one should have had some experience at some point in time with the following: 3 Semesters of Calc Diff Eq Linear Algebra Modern Algebra Basic probability,counting, and statistics.

Scott Wisniewski. I have always considered programming to be nothing but mathematics. It just doesn't look like high school algebra. Frank Shearar. Maths is the ante-room of programming. It is possible to develop the right mindset to programming without maths but it's a lot harder.

Programming is an art. Math is an art. If you combine both of them you will be a better artist. Herberth Amaral Herberth Amaral 3 3 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges. Programming is fundamentally just applied logic, and in fact math is also just applied logic. Which is, alas, why I am not a good coder. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. This basically means, how to take some real-world calculation or some data processing, and write out code that makes the computer do it.

For example, in the game Dungeons and Dragons the characters and monsters have several different statistics for combat:. To see if an attacker hits a defender, the attacker rolls a twenty-sided die. Otherwise, the defender has either dodged or blocked the attack and takes no damage. So Alice has two more hit points than Bob and better armor remember, lower AC is better. But Bob is more likely to make a successful hit remember, lower THAC0 is better and does more damage.

So would you bet on Alice or Bob to win in a fight? Even if you knew a lot of statistics, doing all these calculations would be a pain. But maybe Alice just got lucky in this one fight.

So we can see that with the given stats, Bob is at a slight advantage. The computer just ran 30, simulated fights. If we were to play 30, fights of Dungeons and Dragons with pencil, paper, and physical dice, it would take months to calculate this.

But my laptop had the results in less than 8 seconds. We see that those 6 extra hit points turns the tables and gives Alice the advantage. How about if her hit points were only increased to 16 instead of 20? We see that just tweaking the stats by 2 hit points is just enough to even out the advantages that Bob gets from his higher level of damage.

And when you look at this program, the only math it uses is addition, subtraction, and multiplication and division to find a percentage. Sure, go ahead and learn more math. It can only help you become a better programmer.

Pre-algebra Several basic math skills from middle school are prerequisites for almost any kind of programming, because of how often they come up in programming or in simply understanding how your computer works. Function notation Many programming languages take the both the notation and the concept of a mathematical function and extend it to general computing. But… What is combinatorics? Statistics Statistics is a must for any kind of data science, analysis, or machine learning.

Graph Theory In a mathematical sense, graphs are collections of nodes and the connections between them. Linear Algebra Linear algebra studies vectors and matrices, which are widely used in both video games and machine learning. Calculus Calculus also has applications in both video games and machine learning. Alys Brooks. Latest Posts.

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