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Alder posted:I have a strong understanding of algebra but I admit, I was still totally lost on pure math and higher college math courses. Math is something one must practice constantly otherwise once you start slacking all a sudden you lose some basic math skills. The good part of college is that they often have math centers where you can bother the grad students and volunteers to help solve problems. I love all this advice. Thank you goons! I send my son all your advice!
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# ? Jun 30, 2017 03:25 |
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# ? May 3, 2024 00:49 |
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Piggy Smalls posted:If he wanted to go down the path you chose what sort of college education would be needed? Would you need a degree? I don't have a degree but I'm very lucky to get as far as I have without one. The honest truth is for most corporate jobs, MA > BS > BA, and other than that it doesn't really matter what they're in - they just get you past HR. My job has nothing to do with programming or video games, and the path I took was very much an opportunistic one. I'm the kind of person that craves variety in my work, so I just kind of take whatever interesting things come my way rather than looking for something particular. Edit: The fact that he has someone willing to go through this much effort to help him figure out how to achieve his goals plays a big part in his chances of success. You're a good parent. KillHour fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Jun 30, 2017 |
# ? Jun 30, 2017 07:07 |
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KillHour posted:I don't have a degree but I'm very lucky to get as far as I have without one. The honest truth is for most corporate jobs, MA > BS > BA, and other than that it doesn't really matter what they're in - they just get you past HR. Thank you! I try my best. I can say that this thread has given my son so much information and I'm so grateful to all you goons.
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# ? Jun 30, 2017 14:19 |
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Piggy Smalls posted:Such awesome answers. My son said he appreciates all the advice. He is worried because he's not so strong in math. Also, let's strangle the "I'm not good at math" thing in the cradle: no one is good at math until they do it a bunch. It's not like English, chemistry, or history where you're told something and you spit it back out. In the case of English, you practice it every time you read or speak. Math is about going to class, taking notes, reading a chapter if necessary, and then you try to work through problems and fail and keep going back to reference material, asking people to explain it or reading/viewing a website like khan academy for the same problem type, reverse engineering problems you have the answer to, and doing more and more problems until you get:
Once you take the time to learn a specific problem type, or get exposed to it enough, it's like doing addition and subtraction. You know, those now-simple things you spent literal years learning and using. edit: vvv that post is true as hell too. And once you solve it once you can reference your old code solution in the future. Khorne fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Jul 6, 2017 |
# ? Jun 30, 2017 21:49 |
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Piggy Smalls posted:Such awesome answers. My son said he appreciates all the advice. He is worried because he's not so strong in math. One of the issues with middle-school / high school / early college level math classes that discourages students is the preoccupation with memorization, and timed quizzes and tests. In the real world, you can take days to work through a math-y programming problem and no one will really care, you can read whatever book you want, and you only have to solve the problem once and the computer will remember it forever. You don't have to knock the math classes out of the park - it's ok to muddle through linear algebra and calculus with B's - you just need to learn enough from the classes to know what books have the answers to the problems you're trying to solve.
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# ? Jul 5, 2017 13:26 |
Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:One of the issues with middle-school / high school / early college level math classes that discourages students is the preoccupation with memorization, and timed quizzes and tests. In the real world, you can take days to work through a math-y programming problem and no one will really care, you can read whatever book you want, and you only have to solve the problem once and the computer will remember it forever. You don't have to knock the math classes out of the park - it's ok to muddle through linear algebra and calculus with B's - you just need to learn enough from the classes to know what books have the answers to the problems you're trying to solve. That's very true about any subject, it's most important to know what can be known, than to actually know all the details. This helped me immensely in learning programming. I spent lots of time just reading the manuals/help files for the tools I were using at the time (Visual Basic and later Delphi), browsing from page to page and just reading about random things I had no immediate use for. I sure didn't remember any details, but I did learn that ideas existed and could be looked up for later reference.
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# ? Jul 5, 2017 21:10 |
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# ? May 3, 2024 00:49 |
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Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:One of the issues with middle-school / high school / early college level math classes that discourages students is the preoccupation with memorization, and timed quizzes and tests. In the real world, you can take days to work through a math-y programming problem and no one will really care, you can read whatever book you want, and you only have to solve the problem once and the computer will remember it forever. You don't have to knock the math classes out of the park - it's ok to muddle through linear algebra and calculus with B's - you just need to learn enough from the classes to know what books have the answers to the problems you're trying to solve. I wish this was how it went, not "learn a new concept on tuesday, have a hard-as-gently caress quiz on thursday."
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# ? Jul 5, 2017 21:46 |