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From: mjl@cs.rit.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: DiffEq - heave-ho (Was: What math would you require?)
Message-ID: <1658@cs.rit.edu>
Date: 19 Mar 90 14:14:03 GMT
References: <8368@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <32769@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <1652@cs.rit.edu> <70155@kean.ucs.mun.ca> <33153@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
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Reply-To: mjl@prague.UUCP (Michael Lutz)
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
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In article <33153@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> gds@cs.ucla.edu (Greg Skinner) writes:
> ... In addition, the concepts covered in calculus are
>necessary for the understanding of other types of mathematics
>important to computer scientists.  (For example, expressing a
>recurrence relation in terms of a function of the derivative of
>another, to relate their behavior.  In case you're interested, this
>came up in my analysis of algorithms class last fall.)

Actually, difference equations, a discrete mathematical structure, are
closer models to recurrence relations than are differential equations.
Still, Greg has a point, and I don't think any of us *really* want to
discard all of continuous mathematics, but I would like to subordinate
it to the more abstract mathematics mentioned in my earlier posting.

Mike Lutz
Mike Lutz	Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
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