🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4jlhmi$3g2@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, Jack S. Tan <jahk@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>Stuart.Johnston@Chrysalis.org writes:
>
>> I am specifically wondering about how much math I would
>> need.  I don't really like to do math but I am fairly good at it.
>
>Proofs are useful for asserting that your results are valid, or that
>conditions can or cannot be caused by an algorithm or section of code.
>
>Some derivations can also save a lot of CPU time.  Someone once asked

I have to confess to a substantive math background; I do databases and 
business problems mostly and while I have used the technical side of 
my degree from time to time, it is not the knowing of formulas or the 
knowledge of proofs that has over time proven its value. It is the 
ability to extract the essense of a problem, the skills to quickly 
organize the situation into what I know and what I do not, the 
mental tools that allow me to take a tangled chaotic mass and transform
it into a series of tasks which needed to be addressed which has 
proven to be of lasting value.

I do not claim these skills cannot be acquired in some other pursuit,
but I would not trade linear algebra for cobol, calculus for c++ or 
number theory for java.

Chances are a high school student good at math but not really liking it
is overexposed to a calculus oriented curriculum. You might try 
looking into some beginning number theory texts. Mathematics is a 
huge field of knowledge; the glimpse you get in high school is only 
one small slice of it (and not necessarily the best slice :-) ).