Xref: utzoo soc.college:4894 comp.edu:3090 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!mit-eddie!apollo!burati From: burati@apollo.HP.COM (Mike Burati) Newsgroups: soc.college,comp.edu Subject: Re: CS & Math Requisites (was: MIT Intro. classes) Keywords: math, knuth, cs Message-ID: <4932692a.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> Date: 14 Mar 90 23:11 GMT References: <22650@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1990Mar5.201030.20500@athena.mit.edu> <31845@brunix.UUCP> <14482@s.ms.uky.edu> <15450@wsucsa.uucp> Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM Reply-To: burati@apollo.COM (Mike Burati) Distribution: usa Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA Lines: 62 I missed what started this conversation, but it's a subject I was hoping somebody would bring up... I'm not impressed with the way Math seems to be handled anywhere... As an undergrad, I had the following math courses (BSCS, math minor) Calc I,II,III (req) Linear Alg I,II (req) Discrete Str I,II (req) Diff Eq's (req?) Statistics for Eng (req) Advanced Math I,II (opt) (I can't think of any more...) Note, that these were fairly general math courses that all students seemed to take (except Discrete Structures, which was sort of CS oriented, but not enough). NOWHERE in those courses, did we learn enough about what Knuth terms CONCRETE mathematics (cf "Concrete Mathematics", KNUTH, GRAHAM, PATASHNIK). The math he presents in his new book are the fundamentals that you *need* for computer science, yet this course only seems to exist at Stanford (and the school that one of the other 2 authors teaches it at, which I can't recall). Generating functions, Recurrence relations and everything else you need to understand (and be able to reproduce yourself) KNUTH, Volume I, which incidentally, I currently need in a grad course I'm taking in analysis of algorithms. I can't believe that as a grad student, I finally have a book (the CONCRETE Math book) that tells me what I really need to know (even though I now have to learn it on my own, because CS assumes the MATH dept teaches that stuff...) It seems that there's not enough cooperation between math and cs (maybe math depts don't want other depts telling them how to teach?). Nobody ever told me in my math classes how what I was learning could be applied in CS... For example, everything I learned in Advanced Math I,II (surface equations, uv coordinate systems...) would have been great knowledge, if I had taken my computer graphics I,II courses immediately afterwards instead of a couple years later... At that time, the profs kept telling us that the only real use for AdvMath I,II was for Mechanical Engineering (and to help me get the extra 6 credits I needed for my minor :-) The majority of my Statistics class has been totally useless to me in all my other classes (including 4 grad CS classes so far), and the parts that I do need, could have been squeezed into one of the Calc classes... So, what's my point??? There should be more cooperation between CS & MATH depts to make requirements that fit what you need to know (don't get rid of requirements, just make sure they teach you what you really need...). A knowledge on the math depts side of what CS was going to do with the math would help both in how they teach it, *and* in getting students interested in learning it... I would have been much more interested in uv coord systems, surface intersection equations... if I had realized how much I was going to need it later on for graphics. If anybody of authority at *any* cs or math dept is listening, I'd strongly suggest looking into Knuth's Concrete Mathematics course. ..Mike Speaking for myself; not that anyone would claim knowing me, nevermind aggreeing with me... burati@apollo.hp.com ps: For those of you that know that I went to Univ of Lowell, this article is not meant to say anything bad about them. I think they have one of the best CS programs around. I'd just like to see all schools take a better approach to math for CS.