Re:Why do many math books have so much detail and so little ...
by gjulianm on Monday May 15, 2017 @11:50AM
(#14342497)
The existence of fields that merge math and programming does not mean that "doing math" and "programming" are similar actions/similar fields. I've studied both and there is a world of difference.
> How else would the math be invented in the first place?
Usually the first step for problems to be solved is their expression in a mathematical way. See the heat equation: Newton (and probably others, history is not my strong point) already captured the core idea of heat transfer (transfer rate is proportional to the temperature difference) but it could only be really solved by Fourier once all of those ideas were put in mathematical expressions.
Re:Why do many math books have so much detail and so little ...
by balabaster on Monday May 15, 2017 @03:38PM
(#14344457)
The very act of putting all those ideas into a mathematical expression is in essence programming. You take a whole bunch of ideas, codify them and put them together to either explain something else or produce a product - a theory or formula. Which in essence is what programming is.
Computing theory would have a word or two about this idea.
You can not code a Python script without knowing Python any less than you can use a mathematical theorem without knowing the definitions.
And yes, you can know what problem a piece of mathematics solve without knowing the math. How else would the math be invented in the first place?