Ask HN: How to get better knowledge about math notations in computer science | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to get better knowledge about math notations in computer science

Hi all,

it's now about 10 years, since I finished my masters degree at the university and the math lectures weren't my strength either.

However, I often times read publications and I mostly skip the math formulas. I guess it's time to get better at understanding this stuff (again?).

Do you have any tips/books/resources/videos to learn from?

kind regards

Johannes

View on HN

Excellent talk by Guy Steele explaining the history of maths/comp notations that can probably lead you to the right path through original sources: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCuZkaaou0Q

Then have a look at this extremely underrated talk by Alexander Stepanov for basically falling in love with maths (he gives a long view of maths in general adorned with beautiful commentary): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fanm5y00joc

Thanks, will watch later on :-)

This resource makes it easy to understand mathematical notations by showing comparisons with simple code [0]. The Wikipedia history section of a mathematical concept is also useful to understand in multiple dimensions. Searching for visualizations or break downs can also be useful.

[0] https://github.com/Jam3/math-as-code

I don't know if you mean the logic notation often seen in programming language papers, but it's called sequent calculus. Wikipedia page has a good intro and links to further resources:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_calculus

Chapter One of The Art of Compute Programming is a good mathematical foundation.

Which was expanded into Concrete Mathematics, both are good resources but I liked CM better. I got to work through it as an independent study course with a professor one summer. We had started on TAOCP together, not as a course, just him mentoring me and a book I wanted to work through. We both found chapter 1 very interesting and learned of CM, so we jumped on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com