If the Authors of Computer Programming Books Wrote Arithmetic Textbooks

k3n · 16 points · Posted at 23:00:12 on June 25, 2012 · (Permalink)

That's about how my calculus books -- and courses -- went.

Sir, I don't understand, can you please explain what it is you're doing?

Prof does yet another example on the board, in complete silence.

Ok, anymore questions?

akurei77 · 3 points · Posted at 06:07:24 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

Reminds me of my statistics teacher. His lectures were so bad that by the end of the semester, a quarter of the class just played games on their laptops until he wrote the assignment on the board, then left. I've seriously never seen so many people just get up and walk out in the middle of a class. Another quarter, of course, stopped showing up entirely and just got the assignments from friends.

Of course, the biggest problem with him was that he was basically just regurgitating the book chapter anyways.

cyberbemon · 1 points · Posted at 11:22:07 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

this sounds like my stats class, where did you go to college ?

akurei77 · 1 points · Posted at 11:24:10 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

Washington State University.

cyberbemon · 1 points · Posted at 11:30:58 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

nope, that's far away xD, but you pretty much said the same thing that happened in my stats class here in Ireland. We all hated the guy and I failed his exam, because I wrote the bloody thing when I was high!

akurei77 · 1 points · Posted at 11:40:16 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

Heh. Well, stats is probably one of those classes that's easy to suck at teaching. Our class was Statistics, Probability, and Formal Logic, if I remember right. I don't remember anyone being able to nail every single topic. That's what friends are for, though; I explained logic, my friend explained probability, and we worked together to figure out what the damned stats chapters were saying.

Ran4 · 1 points · Posted at 22:50:33 on July 3, 2012 · (Permalink)

Wait, just a quarter? Really? Why so few?

akurei77 · 1 points · Posted at 23:03:42 on July 3, 2012 · (Permalink)

Well, we were only sophomores, so maybe that had something to do with decent attendance. Most of my comp-sci related classes were actually attended pretty well.

Of course, by the end I was one of the people leaving after he wrote the assignment, so who knows what happened after that.

EasyMrB · 9 points · Posted at 20:44:09 on June 25, 2012 · (Permalink)

I've definitely read a Machine Learning textbook like this...

salmonmoose · 5 points · Posted at 15:16:19 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

As a mostly self taught programmer, I don't mind the huge examples, I understand enough to be able to step through them, and figure out what is going on.

What gets me EVERY TIME, is when a programming book uses classic maths.

I get code, code is easy, most languages are legible enough that if you can't guess what something is doing, you can at least paste it into google.

Classic maths may as well be an alien language, how the hell am I meant to google "That big thing that looks like a sideways M" or any other of the obscure symbols that end up in higher end computing.

Wikipedia is great at this - so, dear mathematicians, if you're looking for a project, go to Wikipedia, and rewrite the maths functions in code, psuedo-code would do, but python is probably a good choice too.

/rant

dahud · 5 points · Posted at 19:56:55 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

Even worse is the usage of classical mathematic notation. I have one collision detection book where functions follow the general form of

bool f(int a, int b);
int g(int a);

And so on. The function bodies are incredibly dense.

more_exercise · 3 points · Posted at 18:20:05 on July 3, 2012 · (Permalink)

When you see the sidways M (called Sigma) look for it in a list of greek letters. It's probably in there somewhere. Now you have a name, plus "maths notation"

[deleted] · 7 points · Posted at 04:14:37 on June 26, 2012 · (Permalink)

You must be reading some shitty programming books.

Had you said Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, or Compiler Design (Dragon book), I might have agreed with this.

If the Authors of Computer Programming Books Wrote Arithmetic Textbooks

Arithmetic for Beginners