Anson's Random Dumps #11

At this point, delayed entries are the norm of this journal series. No one should be surprised or anything (probably no one did). There was no requirement for me to write one entry at the end/ beginning of a day anyway.

I spent the good majority of my morning catching up to my schedule. Yes. I set a schedule for my summer homework. And I procrastinated to fall behind. Chinese and Math are just two subjects that I don’t want to deal with. Every time I deal with them, especially Math, I feel tired. I feel lazy. I feel unmotivated. Our school’s Math questions, especially Section B ones, are one hell of an example. Almost every question feels like solving a brand-new puzzle. While this might be fun for some of you, it certainly isn’t for me.

I don’t like how the current education system links mathematics so closely to computer engineering. Sure, they may be related, but nowhere near “close”. I am able to solve most of my programming problems by trial and error, and exceptions (errors, but on the code’s level) give pointers on fixing these problems. Math problems don’t feel this way. Have you ever watched channels of puzzle solvers? Telling you to try solve a puzzle, before showing you an innovative way to solve it (like, shaking the entire piece)? That’s what every Math question feels for me.

Other than the Section A(1) questions, all of them feel to me, …I’d say unpredictable. I am not a problem-solver when there is no feedback for me. I don’t like being thrown a bunch of geometric shapes and be told to find the area of this triangle. I like writing code, testing them on a web browser, finding problems, then fixing them. Trial and error is my expertise.

Sometimes, there are math-type problems in programming as well. Such as “write a program that outputs all the factors for a number”. However, I’m much adept in solving those than say, “are there real roots in the equation $7x^3 + 69x^2 + 42x + 727 = 0$?”. In programming, you break down a problem into smaller, byte-sized tasks. For example, you’d test every number, and test whether that number is a factor. Then, you convert it into machine-understandable tasks. “Testing every number” would equate to “loop from 1 to the number”; and “whether that number is a factor” would be “whether that number / the other number is 0”. Then you write the relevant code and do some trial and error. I’m unable to apply the same approach in math.

I’ve tried, but to no avail. In my opinion, math requires insights to get right. You have to be very sensitive to notice the gist of a question. Which is not exactly the case for programming. Solving a programming problem doesn’t need you to be sensitive to number. You just need to have logic, and be able to break down a problem. These skills apply to math as well, but they’re not the only skills required, which might explain why I can do programming decently, but not math.

Some might say, “but programming requires Mathematics Module 2 (calculus and crap)!” To that I call bullshit. Unless you want to become a data scientist (yes, you need to code), or a game developer, I don’t see the need of trigonometry in programming.

Yes. I hate math. I don’t care how math “technically gave rise to computers”.

Anson