Ask HN: What type of math should the next gen of coders be learning in school?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32990735
by kjellsbells • 4 years ago
1 5 4 years ago

In college admissions, I see evidence that AP Calculus is essentially a lazy proxy for "does the kid have some thinking ability" even when the student is applying for a course that uses calculus very lightly, if at all.

Recent grads I know spent their time wrangling matrices, thinking in hex and traversing graphs. Honestly it all looks very much as if the infamous New Math from the 1960s would have been a better grounding than calculus.

Don't get me wrong, calc is awesome. But maybe middle and high schoolers need stronger linear algebra to be better coders. Thoughts?

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