CS Profs Debate Role of Math In CS Education

theodp writes "Worried that his love-hate relationship with math might force him to give up the pursuit of computer science, CS student Dean Chen finds comfort from an unlikely source — the postings of CS professors on the SIGSE mailing list. 'I understand that discussing the role of math in CS is one of those religious war type issues,' writes Brad Vander Zanden. 'After 30 years in the field, I still fail to see how calculus and continuous math correlate with one's ability to succeed in many areas of computer science...I have seen many outstanding programmers who struggled with calculus and never really got it.' Dennis Frailey makes a distinction between CS research and applied CS: 'For too long, we have taught computer science as an academic discipline (as though all of our students will go on to get PhDs and then become CS faculty members) even though for most of us, our students are overwhelmingly seeking careers in which they apply computer science.' Frailey adds that part of the problem may be that some CS Profs — math gods that they may be — are ill-equipped to teach CS in a non-mathematical manner: 'Let's be honest about another aspect of the problem — what can the faculty teach? For a variety of reasons, a typical CS faculty consists mainly of individuals who specialize in CS as a discipline, often with strong mathematical backgrounds. How many of them could teach a good course in cloud computing or multi-core systems or software engineering or any of the many other topics that the graduates will find useful when they graduate? Are such courses always relegated to instructors or adjuncts or other non-tenure-track faculty?' So, how does this jibe with Slashdotters' experience?"

Do you want computer science, or engineering?

[FooAtWFU]

And, for that matter, do you want to learn in the classroom, or in industry?

Some Math is Good

[shawnhcorey]

I don't know about calculus but doing formal proofs help me in learning programming because they are, in essence, the same thing. In a formal proof, you break down a problem into simple steps and state the authority for each. It is similar to programming. So some math is good.

I went for artificial intelligence

[holophrastic]

University through AI had me taking computer courses -- which sounded like fun, since I was a computer guy all my life. It would have taken four years before even getting to an AI course, because of all the math courses along the way. I don't care what you say, when I walk through a room, my brain doesn't do any calculus to avoid walking into the desk. It just doesn't. But AI in CS said "calculus is the fastest way to approximate natural path finding".

So I left, and switched to psychology, where AI is called cognitive modelling.

The first day said "the goal is to model things after natural processes, if it takes ten days for the computer program to walk through the room, but it does so naturally, computers will be faster next year."

The third day of the course was to write a neural network in LISP -- oh, and to also learn LISP from scratch -- to solve a real-world decision-making problem. We had two weeks to complete the assignment.

Neural networks are fun, by the way. And ten years later, when I wrote an on-line ticketing program that needed to choose the best way to apply multiple coupons to multiple purchases (in a self-serve kiosk application), brute-force computation did it in 60 seconds, competent programming did it in 10 seconds, pre-computing did it in too much memory for the device, a neural network did it in 50 milliseconds. My client was very happy -- and never knew.

Re:Simple Solution

[khallow]

For example: in order to get my CS degree, I had to take a statistics course that used calculus.

Given that calculus-based statistics is pretty important to CS (eg, software metrics, big "O" stuff, writing programs that use statistics, etc), how is this relevant to your complaint?

Re:Do you want computer science, or engineering?

[munitor]

I'm a Mechanical Engineer with 30 years experience and for a BSME from a fully accredited major school, my math requirements were only Calculus 1-3 and ODEs (loads of application, of course). In my career I've only used the calculus a few times (e.g. passing the EIT exam). I did do some graphics programming, FEM, etc. in school, but at the end of the day, what maths you needed really depended on the direction of your career. What few bits of software I've written that get used needed just bitwise operations and logic. You don't need much math for that.

Re:Computer Science != Being a Programmer

[SnapShot]

Agreed. But, lacking specific domain knowledge, in the real world, I've had about 20 times where I wished I had a design and/or art degree for every time I wished I knew higher level math. Sure, I'm never going to refine a sort algorithm or build an unbreakable cryptographic algorithm but my users are more likely to appreciate a UI that is intuitive and appealing.

Re:Do you want computer science, or engineering?

[Undead Waffle]

Calculus was where I was introduced to the concept of limits, which is the core of Big O notation.

I really wish some of the people writing the code I now have to maintain understood Big O notation...