Conquering Math as a Computer Science Student

look computer science is just that a science and science involves a lot of math you can really get a grasp of what to expect by going to your colleges computer science program going to the math section on that and see what math courses are required to fulfill your computer science degree however you must note that whatever you see under that section is not even close to the amount of math that you'll be doing throughout this degree because there are so many math oriented courses that are labeled as computer science courses because as mentioned at the beginning of this video computer science is a science and throughout your science degree you're going to be learning a lot of math but just so I'm not leaving you hanging a few broad topics that I'll mention are discrete math calculus differential equations numerical methods linear algebra maybe even some computational geometry and probably a whole lot more so now that we've given a little bit of overview of what to expect for math in a computer science degree let's get a little bit more specific on how to conquer math as a computer science major [Music] first let's talk about how to get good a mess so a lot of people have commented on my videos and messaged me saying you know I suck at math is computer science for me and in my personal opinion it can be because I believe that if you actually put in the work even though you may need to put in a little bit more work than the people who are naturally good at math then you can still learn it so the thing is you don't want to just cram for your test you want to learn how and when to use your actual formulas in order to do this you must complete all required and recommended homework and many of my classes you know we had a little subset of required homework that we needed to turn in whether it was graded for accuracy or graded for completion it depended on the teacher but if you do all of that chapters homework whatever your teacher recommends you'll be a whole lot better off the cool thing is if you get stuck on a problem one of these homework problems you can take a look in the back of the book a lot if not all of these math books offer either all of the odd answers or all of the even answers in the back of the book in order for you to reference so if you really can't figure it out maybe you don't know what formula to use whatever go to the back of the book find out the answer and try to reverse engineer from there in order to see you know you have the starting point you have the ending point try to figure out what goes in between if you can't figure that out using internet your own mind books although the book that you're using that has all of your your questions listed in it will tell you the formula and how to use the formula in an equation like this then that's when you turn to your professor utilize their office hours and this just doesn't apply to math this applies to your whole entire college career because it does two things one it helps you learn because they'll kind of walk you through it and as long as you're paying attention it will give you a better understanding because as long as you learn from them and then you go home and you do at least one or two or three or five maybe even ten of that same type of problem knowing how to use a formula will then be stuck in your head but also it shows your professor that you are actually trying and they will be more lenient when grading if you just kind of come to class you feel around in your phone maybe you put your head down and just like not really pain tenshun you're not engaged in class and you don't show up to any of the office hours if you are kind of close to a passing grade or the next letter grade up what do they care you don't you didn't really put in the effort in order to get that but if they saw that you were really trying and you're just like you just barely missed that a or you barely missed that C in order to actually pass the class or maybe it's a D who knows they will they will most likely give you that whether it's right or not I mean that's for your personal opinion doesn't matter to me but teachers most teachers think that way they want to see you actually try and if you try and help yourself then they will try to help you as well and I think that's a good note for me to kind of put a confession out there I poorly utilized their office hours I should have used it a whole lot more so I know I'm sounding hypocritical because I'm recommending it to you it's just I know what it's like to not use the office hours and to kind of get you know the short end of the stick in in the essence of me giving myself the short end of the stick just use office hours they they're incredible if you're really an overachiever I would highly recommend you get ahead on school your teachers going to tell you what chapters you'll be going over the next class so read up on that chapter and even try to complete some of the equations from that chapter it's okay if you don't complete them properly but you will have like a basic understanding of what material will be discussed and when your teachers actually teaching you'll be more engaged because you actually understand at least a little bit of what they're talking about and they'll most likely give you that aha moment where you were stuck on something that night before when you were reading up on the material and then your teacher essentially answered that for you so that is how to get good at math and really put yourself ahead of the curve but how not to be good at math is memorizing formulas by simply memorizing formulas all you're trying to do is cram cram cram everything into your head in hopes that you pass the tests just by barely and then you're going to forget everything that you ever learned which will set you up for failure for your midterm and your final but it also just leave you not knowing anything about math when you leave your computer science program if you're paying all this money for these classes it's a really good idea for you to actually learn the subject matter that you're paying all this money for instead of just getting good grades and I say good grades but you're not you're not going to get good grades if you just try to memorize formulas because you still have a high chance of failing these tests because although you you know you understand some of the formulas or maybe not understand but you try to memorize some of the formulas you still don't know which formula to use for which problem and if you try to use one formula for a problem that needs X formula instead of Y formula that you decided to use then it's going to be wrong and if you're unfamiliar with how school works if it's wrong you don't get any points for it I would know because I've tried to memorize formulas I actually used the wrong formulas on different equations because the equations are kind of similar but they're not the same and I needed to know which formula to use on which problem and it was just a big mess and I'm just I'm literally crying out from personal experience so just take my errors fix them so you don't make the same mistake there isn't just some magic sauce that'll make you good at math other than hard work I know it sounds cliche but it's it's literally just how it is so as for some practical recommendations on how to get good at math instead of some of these you know theoretical recommendations that I've been discussing let me list out a few complete mi t--'s math for CS course it is free it is online and it is linked down in the description below but when you take this you need to make sure that you treat it like a real course that you're paying thousands of dollars for otherwise you're just not going to take it seriously you're going to try to look up answers online and you still won't be learning anything based on the little bit I've watched I understand this course can get really overwhelming rather quickly and if that's the case for you don't don't think that you're not cut out for computer science just because you can't pass mi t--'s math for CS course just take a step back take a breather just come to terms as to where you're really at with in math which you should know based on your high school days and start from there and if you have trouble finding motivation to learn math I would highly recommend looking into some basic math puzzles I've been doing a few lately and they're really fun it doesn't really feel like you're sitting down trying to learn and this may not necessarily pertain to your exact subject matter but it'll teach you how to learn meth some of these puzzles are simple some of these are complex but all of them help you understand how to think mathematically and programmatically I'm actually interested in making a few videos going over some of these simple and complex math buses to kind of give you a brief look into my thought process into solving these particular puzzles so if that's something in to leave a comment down below I'd like to have your input and be sure to subscribe to the channel if you aren't already in order to see those videos as well as other videos that are related to computer science I've uploaded a plethora of computer science videos in the past I've mentioned this in other videos as well and I'm going to be uploading many other computer science related videos in the near and distant future so be sure to subscribe come along for the ride I'd really appreciate it till next time guys have a good one peace [Music]

Channel: ForrestKnight

Views: 113,699

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Id: yKJz5IntDW8

Length: 9min 1sec (541 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 10 2018