A book on math for software engineers?

[Undream]

Ok, so this question spans from the typical "Math is/not needed for software engineering"

I do believe that math is at least partially important, but I have to admit that i know pretty little of it...

So i was wondering if there's any math-applied-to-software engineering-kind of book out there

I have one called: Software Engineering: Abstraction and Modelling... but god... its too advanced for me right now, even if its sound really interesting...

[thoughtcoder]

Ok, so this question spans from the typical "Math is/not needed for software engineering"

I do believe that math is at least partially important, but I have to admit that i know pretty little of it...

Math is very important for software engineering. It's impossible to write correct code without being able to prove things. Learning programming is really an informal education in dealing with concrete manifestations of abstract algebra. That's why you know that the following snippets of code are equivalent.

for i = 1 to n step 1
  x[i] = 2 + y[i]
end

for i = n to 1 step -1
  x[i] = 2 + y[i]
end

for i = 5 to n + 4 step 1
  x[i-4] = 2 + y[i-4]
end

for i = 1 to n step 1
  x[i] = 1 + y[i]
end
for i = 1 to n step 1
  x[i] = 1 + x[i]
end

So i was wondering if there's any math-applied-to-software engineering-kind of book out there

I don't understand what your notion of "math-applied-to-software engineering" is.

What is math? You could help by answering that.

[Undream]

I really dont have a definition for either...
but perhaps... the math that a software engineer should know, as long as it doesnt start downright advanced from the begining...

But I suppose i'm still being too vague...

[thoughtcoder]

What is math? You need to say what that word means so that people can understand your question.

[Undream]

er... mathematics?

[Undream]

er... discrete mathematics? <---- meant to post that, seemingly ate a word... or something

[jbennet]

What is math? You need to say what that word means so that people can understand your question.

er... mathematics?

To be fair, he has a point. Its only called Math in American English. In british english its called Maths, and most internationals know it by its full name of Mathematics.

Anyway, we are getting a bit offtopic. The Original Poster's question is if there's any math-applied-to-software engineering-kind of book out there.

[ddanbe]

Search Amazon.
My first hit was : http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Introduction-Software-Engineers/dp/0521386225/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241864495&sr=1-1#

[thoughtcoder]

To be fair, he has a point. Its only called Math in American English. In british english its called Maths, and most internationals know it by its full name of Mathematics.

That wasn't my point at all. You are so brain-dead. My point was that if he wants to apply "math" to software engineering he's going to have to explain what he means by "math." He can't even define the term, apparently. It's as if he's heard of this thing called "math" and would like to know how it's used.

The first part of his problem he needs to solve then is in figuring out what it is he wishes to apply to software engineering. Is it logic? Is it a practical knowledge of combinatorics and number theory? Is it the study of type systems? Who knows.

What is tricky about his question is that there is no way to do software engineering without applying logical reasoning and algebraic manipulation. I mean math. So the question remains: What does he mean by math? Probably the task of understanding this question is valuable in itself.

[BestJewSinceJC]

@ thoughtcoder

Profound :yawn: . Next time before you post, try removing any arrogant or insulting language from it. Especially when jbennet has contributed much more to this site than you have.

[BestJewSinceJC]

Thoughtcoder: You're really going to give me bad rep for giving you bad rep? Wow. I'm not going to make any more negative comments about you, but like I said, you should be more considerate towards other people. I'm done with this.