JudgementXD

Ok I just wanted to know whether Mechanics or Statistics were more useful for programming. Next year I'll have to choose between one of those 2 to focus on my Maths curriculum so I don't want to pick one which is useless for programming.

Well thanks in advance!

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Eriond

Mechanics. Uh, Statistics? Statistics is just a big pain in the neck. I'm sure it's useful for something in programming, but I don't know what, and I really don't want to find out (Yes, it's that bad)

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JudgementXD

lol. Thanks for clearing this up. My maths teacher actually said that mechanics is more interesting than statistics but...I mean he's a maths teacher...he'll tell ya anything.

Oh and I have another question, the hell is calculus? I'm pretty sure it's really important in programming, it's obligatory for the maths syllabus anyways but every time I asked somebody they either answered "It's like 1+1" or "Well it's....interesting..." so if you guys could clear that up I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

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Eriond

Lol, well, I just completed my first calculus course, so I'll break it down for you, as best as I understand it.

It all centers around the concept of a limit.

Okay, let's say you have the curve X^2.

You want to find the slope of the curve at ANY point along the thing. So if you didn't know calculus, say you wanted to find the slope at (2,4).

Basically you'd do (x^(2.0001) - x^2) / (2.0001 - 2), right? (The formula for slope change in y over change in x, and make the change very small, so it's almost like you're taking the slope of the angle at that point)

Well, basically with calculus you take it one step further. You say

lim h->0

f(x+h) - f(x)
h

Basically that means the same thing. Except, using this you can prove a bunch of rules, the most important being the power rule. Meaning that say if you have an X with a power, you can take the exponent, put it in front of the X and minus the exponent by 1, and that's the derivative of the equation (function which equals the slope at point X)

Sorry if that sounds complicated. I'll try to simplify with examples. Basically the power rule says this: f(x) = x^n. Slope of that function is nx^(n-1).

So that means that the slope of X^2 at ANY point X is 2X. Don't believe me? Try it out. So that means at the point above, the slope of (2,4) is 4. (2X, X = 2, 2X = 4).

Things get more complicated if you throw in stuff like 4x^2 * sqrt(5-X), but that's about it.

Oh, and you know the formula to find the middle of a parabola? -b / 2a?

Middle of parabola is where slope is 0, right? Where it curves back the otehr way.

ax^2 + bx + c = y is the parabola equation, right?

Derivative is 2ax + b + 0.

Make it = 0 (becuase we want the point where slope is 0), 0 = 2ax +b

x = -b/2a

That's where that comes from.

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Gobla

in short:

F(x) = (a/(b+1))X^(b+1) = Integration
f(x) = aX^b = Normal Formula
f`(x) = abX^(b+1) = Differentation

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Dennis56

Mathematics because like programming it requires logic. Being very "logical" and thinking logically is one of the key things a good programmer has.

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Eriond

Well, they're both mathematical disciplines...

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JudgementXD

Well thanks a lot guys for the explanation, especially Eriond.

To be truthful I don't understand most of it but I'm sure that if I come back and read when I've started Calculus I'll understand it.

I might have more questions later so I'll post here if I do!

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lothia

For any programming degree u require the class that Eriod is taking. he is taking the first of 4 that u can take, for just a comptuer sci degree thats the only one you need, if u want a computer engineering degree you need all four. They really are not hard you just have to pay attention.
PS: most colleges require you to take stats if you are going into a math oriented program .

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JudgementXD

Ok have another question. I've started taking programming lessons once a week. My teacher decided that Java would be a good place to start off with. So we've started on the basics and he's explained classes and such and I wanted to make sure that I uunderstood them.

Classes-This is where you basically tell the computer what an object does, looks like etc. Each object has to be separated into different classes whcih can be protected, private or public.

Omg....I forgot what else we went over lol . I'll post back in a few once I remember but can you guys just check with my definition for classes? Btw if it's wrong could you give the correct definition?

Thanks in advance!

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