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Comment by eointierney | Hacker News Reader

This is well put.

Mathematics is our candle in the darkness of our understanding, and the more math we know the brighter our candle flames.

But Mathematics is not a candle, it is the purest analogy we have ever encountered, and it enlightens our minds.

It gives us an appreciation of scale, and measurement thereof, that is unmatched, yielding deep insights into itself and everything else.

I just wish everyone learned number theory and geometry and algebra and physics and and and...

I just wish everyone would read the Road to Reality by Penrose.

Models are little stepping stones that are slippy and unsure, but we must use them to take further steps into the darkness of our ignorance.

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> I just wish everyone learned number theory and geometry and algebra and physics and and and...

I'm less concerned with everyone having knowledge as much as I am concerned about everyone acting like an explorer and finding joy in the exploration simply for exploration's sake. Having targets and goals are good, we probably shouldn't always wander aimlessly (though this shouldn't be discouraged!), but concentrating too much on the target takes away the joy and makes us miss many beautiful things. I cannot find a stone that was turned which didn't end up providing utility, even if it didn't at the time. The competition can make the game more fun, but too much ruins it. It makes us loose sight that it is a game in the first place and why we play. We enrich the lives of ourselves and others by playing it, but we can also have full lives were we to all stop. I think we sometimes forget why we're playing and just do because others are or because personal gains. It's like trying to pick winners in a cooperative never ending game. Reminds me of my friend who would jokingly ask "did you win" when I mentioned a recent game of DnD. The fierce competition also discourage others from playing, but I just wish I could show them how beautiful and awesome this game is. To not let some assholes ruin our fun.

I think currently we have lost sight of why we play the game and are too caught up in figuring out who the best player is. In reality such a thing is non-determinable due to the system complexities and timescales. I also don't really see any good utility other than an ego boost but comes at the cost of hyper-focusing on temporarily near outlook rather than exploring further. We need many types of explorers and I'm not quite understanding why we've structured the system to reward only one type. Simplicity?

Let's play D&D

And let's use our own intelligence to do so

Intelligence is practiced thought, wisdom is practiced intelligence, love is practiced wisdom

Can I roll an acrobatics check to do a sick backflip and try to impress the kobold?

The kobold offers you a job for his son's bat mitzvah in the coming months.

> I just wish everyone learned number theory and geometry and algebra and physics and and and...

When people ask why do CS Majors learn so much maths? "They won't be using it for programming!"

Maths teaches the CS major how to think. Sometimes things are not A->B and are very abstract like math problems.

> When people ask why do CS Majors learn so much maths?

CS majors learn a lot of math?

Oh gosh, yes. I only had to 'upgrade' one class to an effectively harder version to get a minor in math. :'||||

I mean I'm biased since I did a physics undergrad _and_ took additional math classes, but from what I'm aware of, even top universities require less math from CS majors than they do for even the easiest Engineering degrees. Calc II (series, not multi-variate) is not "high level" in a modern context (maybe in a general social context) and + Linear Algebra is nowhere near "a lot" unless you compare to majors who do not even take calculus.

So pretty much: when comparing to other STEM majors, I'm given the impression that CS majors are near the bottom of math requirements. At both undergrad and graduate levels.

I went up through Calc III, and of course PHYS I and II w/ calc is a barebones requirement. Discrete, linear, stats, the basics there.

I think it varies per college. Calc II was the very first class I took on the very first day of my freshman year of college. It was really a decent bit of work but not unbearable.

Most CS programs are pretty math-intensive and this seems to be the general community consensus, I'm not sure where you're getting this impression from.

I mean specifically in the context of STEM degrees. I was curious about my intuition so I did a quick look. Used Stanford as a baseline and their sample plans if available. CS looks on par with many but slightly south of the median since several engineering degrees require more math. The ones that require less are "Management Science & Engineering" and "Materials Science and Engineering". But typically similar to chem, bio, and most engineering degrees, which all have more science courses which can teach additional mathematics (generally in calc and stats). Being close to the median I wouldn't call this "a lot," even if there is low variance in that distribution. Where I'd probably draw that line is beyond the general 3 calcs and linear algebra. Personally I'm generally unimpressed with most intro stats courses.

Here's at least some flow charts for engineering degrees (which has a CS program): https://ughb.stanford.edu/plans-program-sheets/program-sheet...

Additional note: I can at least attest that in my university Calc 3 (multi variate) is not a requirement and this does not appear to be out of the norm. Interestingly side note, same with ethics which is exceptionally common in other stem programs (I believe a federal requirement in engineering).

We were given the option for two more classes to get a Math minor

I was a senior and wanted to just graduate, so I skipped it

We also had math classes masquerading as CS courses.

For example, Algorithms with Big O notation analysis

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