I guess it's a personal thing, but for me this fired my enthusiasm for both learning the various techniques for differentiation, and for equation solving. Then integration followed as simply reverse differentiation [amazing - one is the area under the graph - one is the slope of the graph - why should they be opposite ? Because maths is beautiful is the short answer - a universe of discovery is the long answer]. Around this point maths became fun, the work part evaporated. Later I got interested in computation because you can't always differentiate or solve equations analytically (with pure math), but you can do it numerically, to any desired degree of accuracy with a computer.
indeed. here's a better link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langlands_program
> Fuck I hate math.
this is the only other sentence of your post i had time for, and all i have time to say in response is that i don't.
Something else I remember was a computer graphics professor saying that the fast fourier transform was the greatest invention after the wheel.
Generally speaking you can find programming jobs where you need basically no understanding of mathematics. But computational engineering science is so much more than programming. Conversely often enough the abstract thinking that is the core of mathematics can greatly help you to tackle the more complex problems you can encounter in programming.
You are buying ads online, and want to maximize your ROI.
You have 6 types of EC2 nodes you can use, and you want to pick the most efficient set for your mildly parallel work.
The article is wasting our time.
Those of us who were force-fed useless mathematics since 1st grade have already closed our minds completely to any attempts at beautifying something that we normal people, after +-/, see as completely fucking useless, boring and hate-inducing. At least I feel that way, but I assume I'm not alone.
I was force fed not only simple +-/ but several university level courses. Why? Because I wanted to get myself a programming degree and for that one, somehow, needed a whole bunch of weird-ass algebra and shit. I could see no reason for learning that at 15, when I was writing Pascal and PCBoard PPEs, no reason for learning that at 20 when I was writing C/C++ shit and no reason now at 30+ when I'm writing webapps in PHP/js/html5/etc. But time and time again I was told that without that complicated mathematics I wouldn't become shit.
Well, now I'm making a living programming, without a degree, and without being able to derive x2 from god-knows-what. My mind has PROVEN to me that I don't need complicated math and therefore cemented my previously belief that advanced math is necessary to program.
Not once during all my years of school and university was I ever shown a use for that advanced math, even though I _begged_ for at least some connection to reality, some proof that the math is going to be useful for anything else other than passing an exam. Do my SQL queries speed up if I use cosine? Will my code autoindent properly if the square root of x^y is used? No. Instead I was told to just learn it because I'd use it "some day".
My brain is now completely, 100% closed to advanced math. So what this Edward guy in the article should do is not try to change our minds, or even change the minds of the kids of today that are being force-fed math. Instead he should concentrate his efforts on bringing the teachers (and curriculum) down to earth. Change the way math is taught. Bring in real-world examples of why derivations are somehow important. After that is done then the NEXT generation won't fucking hate math, and mathematicians, as much as use older folk do.
Fuck I hate math.