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TsviBT comments on Rewiring my Brain: (gentle) Help Appreciated - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: JMiller 07 October 2013 04:13PM

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Comment author: TsviBT 07 October 2013 09:17:19PM 2 points [-]

In addition to just practicing a lot, I strongly recommend learning discrete stuff: combinatorics, basic number theory, basic discrete math, graph theory, linear algebra, algorithms, theory of computation, probability (not the theory, I mean get a book of problems), even group theory. If you really are philosophically minded, set theory and logic are good ideas too.

Some of these might sound scary, but learning the basics is not harder than calculus - get a few introductory books, and choose one you like. And pretty much everything I listed will be more useful to you in computer science / programming. I'm not saying you don't need to know calculus, it's just that studying the above will more directly teach you mathematical reasoning, as well as being of direct use in CS.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 08 October 2013 01:25:11PM 2 points [-]

For a philosopher, I'd expect group theory to be significantly easier than intermediate calculus.

Comment author: mwengler 10 October 2013 07:07:36PM 0 points [-]

For another point of view, I disagree. But group theory is super different from calculus, so don't be surprised if one is easier for you than the other.

Comment author: JMiller 10 October 2013 03:29:59AM 0 points [-]

Ok, I'll keep that in mind. I definitely intend to expand my horizons.