Books that might inspire a math major to see beauty in coding?
Jun 23, 2020
22 Comments
I have a friend who's a math undergrad.
Are there any books that might help someone who's deeply passionate about math, to possibly appreciate or see some beauty in software algorithms? (and perhaps see more of a connection between the two)
He doesn't currently code, although I think he once did CS in high school.
I don't think he's going to want to pursue CS as a career. But if there's anything that might potentially inspire some connection or interest, I'd like to at least share it with him while he's still a student, just in case it sparks anything.
#math
comments
1) They just like solving equations on paper.
2) They see the bigger picture, and appreciate all the real-world applications dependent on math.
I think a lot of people fall into category 1) because they are just good at it, but can’t be truly passionate until they fall into category 2). Once you are in the latter, you realize that math by itself is useless without coding, and that helped me see the beauty of computer science.
I love math, but have started to like cs more recently. You learn math topics once, because there’s only one correct path to a solution. There’s many ways to implement a solution though, so I think it’s computer science rather than coding that is awesome. Imagine where we’d be if all math was implemented by brute force.
I wish my teachers would’ve been more inspiring, would have saved a lot of time. I almost didn’t end up considering the major as an option, and when I did, advisors discouraged me from majoring in it altogether because they didn’t think I could handle it. Very happy with my choice.
I do wish I had your motivations though when studying in undergrad rather than the two reasons I listed. I’m sure the intrinsic motivation helped you grasp the material much better than others
Disagree; example: constructive and non-constructive proofs (for existance of an object)
> On the other hand, the cs path taken IS the solution in itself. With big data, how you arrive at the mathematical answer entirely determines if the application will work, even if the answer is correct.
My BS detector just got triggered by You mentioning "big data".
> That’s what I meant by learning only once. There are clear advantages to learning multiple paths to the same output cs-wise, but with math I have yet to see an advantage of one proof over another.
Disagree: different proofs teach you different things. One proof may be generalised or specialized to solve another problem or provide a deeper insight, the other may not.
Pardon me, but somehow I feel that the only kind of math You've been exposed to is applied math!
But only he would know for real, of course.
Thx again!
Otherwise, maybe you can introduce code as a tool. For example I’ve coded up visualizations for algos before. Maybe they code up some math functions and see it live.
I would start him with python (guttag).