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Ask HN: When has knowing advanced math been useful in your job/life?

4 points by herdyderdy ↗ HN
I've forgotten almost all of my math since college since I've never needed to use it directly. Maybe the process of learning and studying topics like calculus, discrete logic, stats, and number theory helped hone my thinking powers in some way, but the actual techniques from these courses I've never had to use.

4 comments

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mixmastamyk
The age old question. It’s basically a symbolic thought exercise. If you enjoyed it and want to do more, look for a job that uses it. Video games use more than one might expect. Khan academy can get you up to speed again.

If you didn’t enjoy it, well good to know as well. Quite a few of us chose a suboptimal major for our current work, not the end of the world.

favourable
The old joke: Someone graduates knowing advanced math, then immediately gets plopped in front of Microsoft Excel and has to learn that instead!
bell-cot
Beyond $Job, and intellectual cred? ~Never.

But as a way to build "brain muscles", and serious appreciation for how complex both the world and abstract systems can easily be - advanced math is a cheap (for society) degree. No field work, fancy instruments, nor laboratories, as most sciences require. No auditoriums / theaters / etc., as arts & music generally require. Nor...

And at least back when I was in grad school, $College's need for TA's for the intro-level math courses (that many other fields of study required) made it really easy to pay the bills.

obpe
I have used non-Euclidean geometry to implement an approximate distance calculation. I have used calculus to implement control logic.

I have also worked with amazing developers that couldn't do simple addition in their heads.

Math is an extremely powerful tool that most people do not understand how to use and thus do not "need" to use.