
Ask HN: CS students/graduates, Did you struggle with Math? - zabana
If so, how were you able to get by ? Did you feel like you were falling behind much ? Were you still able to grasp concepts like complexity and other such things ?<p>Thanks<p>Edit: I&#x27;m currently taking MIT OCW 6.006 (Introduction to algorithms) and some of the math goes a bit over my head but I&#x27;m still able to follow along (for the most part). However I&#x27;ve observed, especially during recitations, that most of the students tend to have a very strong grasp of the fundamental math concepts required to understand the material. I&#x27;m curious to know if there are any students who struggled&#x2F;have struggled with this because it seems to me that CS students are math wiz-kids (from the outside looking in).
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tptacek
Hah. I didn't get more than a D in any high school math course, failed 2 of
them and had to retake them in summer school, and didn't go to college.

I work in cryptography engineering today.

The routine algorithmic work we do in the industry may be rooted in somewhat
sophisticated math, but in reality even if you're doing somewhat advanced work
you're not engaging directly with that math. If I read through the OCW 6.006
curricula I see lots of topics that are important in practice, but none of
them really involve deeply understanding complexity math.

If you have an intuition for why sort tends to be nlogn and search logn, I
think you're probably doing fine.

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kasey_junk
Computer Science often attracts people who have been told they are good at
math from a very early age and often people who aren't that are intimidated
away from pursuing it.

I was decidedly _not_ one of those people who was told I was good at math and
it caused me a lot stress before I started studying CS and early on in my
studies.

But it turns out, a lot of what makes people get the reputation for being
'good at math' is about a very specific subset of math that is taught to young
students. That very specific subset _is_ important for CS study, but its a
very small part of the maths breadth that you need. For instance, I'm terrible
at Calculus but found an aptitude for logic only after I began studying CS.

TLDR: Yes, you can study CS while also struggling with math. You have to do
things to make up for those struggles such as engage with the professors/TAs
more aggressively, get outside tutoring/help & work harder than your peers in
those classes.

~~~
zabana
Thank you for sharing your experience. I can totally relate to that. Cheers

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cryptozeus
It depends, I was really bad at math but today I work as Full stack developer.
I would say my level of SD is at 7 out of 10. In my day to day I do not use
any math, In 15 years of software development no one has asked me math related
question in interviews. However once I was put on a project to created very
advance level 3d UI dashboard which require lots of geometry and math related
logic. I defiantly struggled a lot and ended up giving the project to someone
else. Even though there are many great tools for 3d development, I can imagine
math being very useful when you are dealing with such projects.

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hluska
A very good friend from high school went to one of the top Universities in the
world. He was flat out brilliant, so none of us were surprised when he was
accepted. But, we were very surprised when he got back after his first year
and he seemed defeated. He had always been so much smarter than everyone else
and suddenly, he was exposed to a world where he struggled with things other
students seemed to find intuitive. By the end of his fourth year though, he
had realized a couple of things:

1.) Many of the people who he thought had an intuitive grasp of concepts that
were way over his head had been just as confused and lost as he felt. They
were either better actors, or he felt too much shame to recognize they were
struggling.

2.) Over the course of his program, every one of his colleagues struggled with
something others found intuitive and found something intuitive that others
struggled with.

The point of all this is that you are almost certainly not alone in how you
feel. I think you'll be okay!

If math in particular causes you trouble, it might be a sign that your study
skills aren't quite up to where they should be. But, with some work, you can
get over this hurdle!

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dreta
I don't find CS-level mathematics difficult, but still failed it twice during
first semester because at that time it's the most boring, and pointless thing
you can learn when trying to become a proffessional programmer.

I picked everything up by myself later after learning computer graphics and
AI, since that's when, for me, algebra and calculus became something more than
a grade. Derivatives "clicked" for me because i needed to know how to
calculate a root value using Newton's method.

I do lack fundamentals, and i do suffer because of that, but over the years i
came to the conclusion that i won't understand something if i don't care, and
that's just how things are. The education system tends to front-load theory,
and i can't learn for the sake of learning. Maybe it's the same for you.

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nextos
You don't need any prior math knowledge to attend college. The math they teach
at high school only serves to develop a bit of mathematical maturity, but it's
quite different. The abstraction level is much lower, there is little emphasis
on proofs, and too much emphasis on elementary algorithms to solve some
oversimplified problems.

Furthermore, unless you have followed some relatively uncommon high school
program that teaches logic and discrete mathematics, the actual overlap
between high school and first year CS math is almost empty.

I think a major part of excelling at mathematics is to understand that you
must go through material very slowly. Mathematics is not literature. Taking 1
hour of good effort to go through 1 page is far from unusual if you want to
truly conquer concepts by understanding definitions, developing good
intuitions and proving all major results.

~~~
kasey_junk
Agree with every part of this except, "Mathematics is not literature. Taking 1
hour of good effort to go through 1 page is far from unusual"

Serious literature study frequently requires this level of pondering as well.

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zerr
Take Calculus first - if you start from the beginning, everything flows by
itself, it is really enjoyable and logical, suddenly - everything makes sense.

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rs86
Yes, but it tends to get easier with time.

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ya3ad
A lot man. A lot.

