The Mathematical Hacker

Evan Miller:

They seem to agree on one thing: from a workaday perspective, math is essentially useless. Lisp programmers (we are told) should be thankful that mathematics was used to work out the Lambda Calculus, but today mathematics is more a form of personal enlightenment than a tool for getting anything done.

This view is mistaken. It has prevailed because it is possible to be a productive and well-compensated programmer -- even a first-rate hacker -- without any knowledge of science or math. But I think that most programmers who are serious about what they do should know calculus (the real kind), linear algebra, and statistics. The reason has nothing to do with programming per se -- compilers, data structures, and all that -- but rather the role of programming in the economy.

One way to read the history of business in the twentieth century is a series of transformations whereby industries that "didn't need math" suddenly found themselves critically depending on it. Statistical quality control reinvented manufacturing; agricultural economics transformed farming; the analysis of variance revolutionized the chemical and pharmaceutical industries; linear programming changed the face of supply-chain management and logistics; and the Black-Scholes equation created a market out of nothing. More recently, "Moneyball" techniques have taken over sports management. There are many other examples.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 14, 2012 2:19 AM
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