More Math Please!

[Binary Ranger]

We're all aware of the mathematics involved in software engineering, game development, and all the other good things that make up the thing we waste most of our precious time on.

But how much math is applied to creating new technology? Of course, it depends entirely on what you want to do I would imagine.

How much math experience has everyone here had? What level is enough to start applying and attempting to create new software or devices? If that's too difficult to answer, what can a person do with their level of math skill if they have taken up to Calculus?

I myself am in Calculus as of now and am doing well. There are parts of it I find very confusing, but I just put extra time into learning it.

So, how much math is required, how much do you know, and what can you do with it?

 

[carnageX]

Software? Depends mostly on the type of software you're developing... If you're developing software that requires math and such, there's libraries for equations and actual math functions and such out there. There's basic math usually in software development though.

As far as actual devices? Like, what do you mean exactly? If you mean the electrical / actual device design... Yes, you're going to need a lot of math and physics (A LOT of physics).

For my CS major, I've had to take a lot of math classes, but I only do average in them (it's my achilles heel, so to speak); from Calc 1 & 2 to statistics. I haven't used much math at all honestly in any of the CS or SE classes I've taken. Only thing I can say I've programmed that's beyond basic math is a program me and a few buddies made for fun to do our statistics homework for us. Even then, we used libraries for everything, and just applied the equations we had available to us to get the answers (except for a few things that we had to do ourselves, such as a stem-and-leaf chart my friend implemented, which is pretty awesome).

 

[DBrags]

It all basically depends on what you want to do. I am also a CS major and what is good and bad about it is we do not need a lot of math. Our only requirements were calc 1 & 2, discrete math 1 & 2 which is mainly used for theory courses, and finally statistics mostly pointless.

Whats interesting is I have also been thinking about this due to my friend. He is a CE major and as the years go on I have been wanting to switch to it more and more, but I'm so far into my degree that I would be in school forever.

From what I understand if you want to get into actually creating devices meaning circuits and stuff, your going to need what physics 1 & 2, differential equations, multivariable calculus, electricity and magnetism, and linear algebra.