I am starting IT studies. As someone always interested in computers I have paths in my head how to get needed information. There is also a luxury of testing anything learn in practice by for ex. contributing to open source or creating a server.
Math was always interesting for me too, but I haven’t spend time on learning it much, I have many lacks from middle school and there are topics I know about but can’t use them in practice or have no intuition or forgot how to formally write them.
So I started to try to learn, as a self-learner most time I spend on Wikipedia and forums, but those turned out to be death end when it comes to understanding whole topic and not just reminding one thing.
So question to you that are learning math: how do you do so? And I also never learned anything in a typical “school” way, I always need to feel interest or have a goal in something.
Depending on what you want to do in IT, you may not really need any math. If you are going to do programming, then yes, you’ll need some advanced math.
You don’t need to be good at math for programming… It all depends on what you want to do. Even if you do want to do math heavy things like graphics or dealing with any formulas for any reason, you can learn as you go… However, wanting to jump ahead is never a bad idea. Most of the time, basic understanding of math is absolutely fine in programming.
I took one semester of Java, and I was expected to know a bunch of math I’d never taken before. Trigonometry and I forget what else. I’d love to know some programming, but I just don’t have the brain for it.
For math, it really depends on what you’re doing. The overwhelming majority of software simply uses conditionals (if this, then that), and it also structures and consumes data. If you’re working on stuff like calculating stress of physical structures, then some math may be involved. But even then, unless you’re innovating in a specific field, you’ll often use prior art from solved problems.
For example, if you want to write some math to create a reverb on sound, we’ve done that before. If you want to forecast trends, we’ve done that, too. Machine learning and AI is accompanied by a lot of open source libraries, so you can just install a lib and use it.
You don’t need advanced math IMO for programming.
Binary stuff and complexity is like the worst thing you’ll ever need, except if you do scientific software or 3D videogame engines.
I agree but I’ll take it a step further. I’ve been in IT for almost 20 years. I never took a math class after high school (age 18). I took math up through calc 2 in high school.
I’ve never used a single lick of anything beyond basic math for my work. None. And I don’t know anyone else who has either over the course of 4 different employers and working with hundreds of people.
In my opinion it’s the logical thinking and the process of problem solving that are the parts of math that translate to IT. Doing proofs, understanding all the reasons why something is the way that it is. So in that regard sure, math is important. But I feel like OP is implying that actually knowing how to do complex math problems is important for a career in IT, and it really isn’t.
You definitely don’t need advanced maths for most programming, especially the usual enterprise/web development. I have worked for almost 35 years as a programmer, the last 25 years as a senior developer, and my math skills are not great. My formal maths education finished at age 16, and I only scored an average grade in the exam. Programming is a distinct skill from maths, and if you have some natural aptitude and a real interest in it, then you can make a career as a developer, mostly learning as you go. Some formal computer science education may be useful too, although I did not have much of that either.