Re:Caltech's CS interview prep course
by analog31 on Sunday February 27, 2022 @11:05PM
(#30496295)
Indeed, but I think we could revise the curriculum without causing a shortage of "math people" relative to existing needs. What school math teaches right now is a lot of expression manipulation, and it's all done by hand. That's not how people do math after school, even mathematicians. And it creates a distorted view of math, since it's limited to problems that have closed solutions using relatively straightforward algorithms.
I'd like to see school math place roughly equal emphasis on:
1. Arithmetic, i.e., expression manipulation
2. Computation, both numeric and symbolic
3. Learning from data
4. Theory, i.e., things like sets and proofs
Items 2 and 3 are things that people can use throughout their lives, even outside of STEM careers, and could be blended with the science curriculum. Items 1 and 4 would serve the needs of "math people" and academic mathematics.
I'd like to see school math place roughly equal emphasis on:
1. Arithmetic, i.e., expression manipulation 2. Computation, both numeric and symbolic 3. Learning from data 4. Theory, i.e., things like sets and proofs
Items 2 and 3 are things that people can use throughout their lives, even outside of STEM careers, and could be blended with the science curriculum. Items 1 and 4 would serve the needs of "math people" and academic mathematics.