Hello Laura, Saturday, October 8, 2005, 8:53:09 PM, you wrote:
LC> I think that only people who thrive on playing with their LC> mathematical intuition will love computer science and all LC> higher math. But most women do not work on developing one. This is complicated nowadays by the fact that computer-related fields have multiplied, and only some of them involve much in the way of mathematical intuition. Core CS is very much a mathematical exercise. We have many students who balk at the mathematical part of our program, and they bail to IS or IT or Multimedia, etc. That's fine - we all should be so lucky to find where we belong - but once again mathematics becomes the crux of the issue. Kinda makes me feel good that I have 3 degrees in math. All those years of geekdom are finally paying off :-). I discovered programming in a FORTRAN in my senior year at college and knew I found my thing. The other two subsequent degrees were mainly because I didn't want to back up and retool in undergraduate CS - but my last degree was in Applied Math with an emphasis in CS. Yet I wonder if the likes of us are becoming very much a minority, in the U.S., at least, since our math skills as a nation are falling dramatically. "Knuth alone hath gazed on beauty bare." I think that's what Edna St. Vincent Millay would've written if she wrote that poem today. Few there be that find it, eh? I have an artist relative that thinks I'm a narrow left-brained nerd. When I try to discuss the beauties of design and problem solving and clean code, etc., I get blank stares and condescending disbelief. Sheesh! He thinks he has a monopoly on dealing with beauty. -- Best regards, Chuck _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
