why you DON’T need math for programming

all right so in this video we're gonna go through whether you actually need maths for programming or not and i know that this is a big thing for a lot of people and that it's something that a lot of people are scared of when it comes to programming so we're gonna take a look at it and i'm actually gonna start off with the conclusion so in case that's all you came for then that's fine and you can just watch that but after that i'm going to go through a bit more of the rationale behind how i came to that conclusion and explain it in a bit more depth and i'll also put timestamps in the description in case you want to jump around the video however you like so uh yeah let's go so do you need maths the problem with answering this question is that i don't know who's asking it nor what the person is actually asking do you simply want a yes or no answer would that satisfy your question probably not i would say i think that the reason that this question is being asked is the person that's asking this question is worried that the maths required for programming is going to be too difficult for them to learn so the short answer to if you need maths for programming is yes but the answer to the more relevant question whether it's too difficult for you to learn is no because you most likely know enough maths already if you can solve these three math problems then you know enough math to learn to code most programming that requires maths only requires basic arithmetics arithmetics is just multiplication division addition and subtraction so yes you do need to understand basic arithmetics but again most people actually do and most people are watching this video do understand basic arithmetics so in that sense most people actually know enough maths to be able to code and you don't in that sense need more maths to be able to actually learn to code but if what i'm saying is actually true then how come so many people think that you need so much maths for programming so now we're getting to the reasoning behind my answer and i think that this is a misconception on the one hand and also not a misconception on the other hand the misconception is sort of like a paradox in a sense because both are true you both need maths and you also don't need maths some parts of programming especially the more cutting edge scientific stuff does require quite heavy mathematics and a lot of computer science related stuff is geared towards the cutting edge but if you want to be able to build just an app or a website then you don't really need anything more than just super basic mathematics and at that point it's almost an overstatement to call out mathematics and that's because chances are that when you're building those things you won't even realize that you're using mathematics if however you want to become a literal computer scientist who's working on like the cutting edge of machine learning or artificial intelligence then yes you'll need to understand these very complex mathematical concepts because you'll be actually working with them very closely and you'll need to understand them well enough to actually come up with improvements on these theories which means that you'll need to understand them really well and i think that this is what a lot of people talk about when it comes to programming but the reality is that you don't actually need to understand all these concepts to actually be working with ai or machine learning in your code almost like a calculator you may not understand how the calculator actually works under the hood but you're still able to use it whether you need maths for programming is up to what you want to do with programming and to be honest i think that if you're the type of person who's actually interested in the type of programming that requires this heavy mathematics then you're also probably the person who isn't really worried about heavy mathematics oh and this video is actually sponsored by private internet access vpn private internet 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two years for only 259 per month plus if you sign up with the link in my description you also get an extra three months completely free i highly recommend that you check it out [Music] if you are worried about the maths then you shouldn't be and one of my like pet peeves in this world is people who say that like i'm not good at maths or i'm not good at reading or i'm not good at whatever and if you are one of those people who believe that you were born without the innate ability to understand mathematics then stop it because you weren't born anything and if you suck at maths it's not because you can't be good at mathematics most likely not being good at maths is because of other factors than your genetic potential i'm under the belief that pretty much anyone could learn pretty much anything if i find something that i can't do i'm super quick at blaming anything but my genetics i didn't study hard enough i didn't have the right teacher i didn't find it interesting etc this sort of sounds like a bad thing like blaming anything but yourself but in the right context it can actually be a really good thing when i was studying exercise science we talked a lot about a concept of the fixed mindset and the growth mindset and the fixed mindset is the person who feels like everything is the way that it is and it cannot be changed i got this job because it's the only one i can get i wish i had as much talent as michael jordan i happen to not be good at mathematics and all these statements are based around the idea that things are the way that they are and they can't be changed michael jordan was born talented and i wasn't so if you're one of those people that have these sort of like limiting type of beliefs about yourself then i want you to try to change that because you want to try to get to a growth mindset and the growth mindset essentially just means that we believe that we can change things and things are not just the way that they are but we can actually impact the way things are and so if we take a look at those statements again but from a growth mindset perspective they would look like this i have this job because i didn't put the effort in required to get a different one if i put in the effort i can definitely get a better job if i would have worked as hard as michael jordan or harder then i could have also had the chance to become as good or better than him right now i'm not good at maths but if i put my mind to it then there's no reason to believe that i couldn't become amazing at it and i've always had this like growth mindset and i'm almost like i feel like this next thing will almost make me seem like i've got a ginormous head but it's i've had this growth mindset almost a fault to the point where i pretty much think that i could do anything if i just tried which isn't really true sometimes there are real genetic boundaries like your height it's really difficult to become the tallest person alive without having the genetics but mostly i think that people put just way too much emphasis on genetics and way too little emphasis on effort and i know that this is an experience that a lot of people have had but that i've talked to and this is the experience that when they were younger they almost felt like they were genetically designed almost to be bad at maths because they were going to school with a friend who was twice as good as them at maths even though they were the same exact age but reality is more likely that they either had parents who were really good at maths or that your teacher happened to explain things in a way that fit perfectly for your friend but not for you or they had both of those things most likely circumstance is what made it so that your friend had an advantage over you when it comes to mathematics and if your roles were to be reversed then you would have had that same advantage so if you would have had that teacher that explained things in a way that you understood but your friend didn't and you had the parents that were really good at maths that were explaining things to you at home then you would have been twice as good as them at maths so why is all this important it's important because i think that everyone needs to get away from the cliche that maths is hard if someone else can understand something then you can too so you may very well have gotten started later and you may very well have these disadvantages but if they can do it so can you this is more true today than ever the problem of having a teacher explain things in a way that you don't understand is something that we can bypass today you can google the concept that you don't understand and have thousands of different teachers explain it to you in thousands of different ways and hopefully and most likely at least one of them will explain it in a way that makes it click for you and the biggest thing that really cemented this in my head was actually going to the gym and working out because seeing that correlation between reps in the gym and actually over time seeing your muscles grow or your body fat get lower that seeing that correlation just made me realize how much things can be impacted with consistent effort over time and this idea can be applied to pretty much anything you go to the gym and you do 10 bicep curls every day for a year you won't see any change to the first week maybe a tiny change after a month but after a year you'll see a huge difference same goes with anything so do a little bit of maths every single day or twice a week for a year start with math that you can handle and then gradually build to harder and harder tasks and then by the end of the year i'm willing to bet that you'll be amazed at how much you've improved and that's also why i say that it isn't really hard because that concept is stupidly simple right because you just put in one hour of work two times a week or maybe even once a week for a year and then by the end of that year you'll have improved immensely and i think you'll be surprised at how consistently putting in just a small amount of effort over time that will yield crazy results all right and here's a secret that i think will be really useful for you which is that for all of the maths classes that i've ever taken in my software engineering degree and actually also in my exercise science degree because we did some math in there too for every single class every single time that i opened up the book for the first time and i looked at like what are we supposed to be able to do every single time my reaction was always the same which was like what the actual what like i don't even understand the symbols in here and i still was able to get top grades by the end of that course for all of those classes and my classmates also had the exact same reactions and this is not a humble brag by any means this is definitely a brag because i'm super proud of being able to have done that like i've thought it was so difficult and i didn't understand it to begin with and then to end up with top grades like i'm super proud of it but i want you to understand that i don't even think that this should be a humble brag or a brag of any kind because you should be sitting at home thinking that's not a big deal i could do that too i could do that all day i can do this all day come on don't do that all day son come on don't put your head in there so anyway you probably know all the maths that you need to be able to learn to program and if you want to go into like a computer science degree or a software engineering degree then yes you'll need to learn some more maths but you can do maths and honestly the type of maths that you'll be learning will be just way more interesting than anything that you've learned before because it's the type of maths where you'll actually see why it exists and you'll learn the type of maths that will allow you to actually be building artificial intelligence systems which just makes things more interesting by default and you will be able to learn it i guarantee you that you will anyway that's it for this one and i hope that you walk away from this video feeling just a little bit more confident about your capability of learning maths and i hope you enjoyed this as well and if you did make sure to subscribe because i would enjoy that and yeah that's it for this one i hope you enjoyed it and i hope i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Hallden

Views: 78,766

Keywords: Automation, coding, tech, programming, finance, productivity, math in software engineering, math in programming, software development, do you need math for software engineering, do you need math for computer science, do you need math for cybersecurity, do you need math for programming, do i need math for programming, is math needed for programming, is math needed in software engineering, math for software engineering, math for software development

Id: ijpb_eoptNE

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021