/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3885180
pic only slightly related
not mad
just wondering

afaik comp sci is just baby tier maths(shit tier)

You exactly explained the problems of european CS bachelor/master. They are supposed to learn enough theory to do "research", yet after graduation their job will mainly consist of coding. This way the universities fail to teach either of them, leading to computer "scientists" who can't code properly AND have only superficial knowledge of theory.
If you want theoretical research, go into mathematics.
If you want to be a code monkey, learn programming and see the study of CS only as supplementary qualification.

Where are you from OP? (Germany calling)

As I understand it, people have to pay >9000 dollars for university in the US and their overall goal is to get richt. Theoretical Comp Sci or a steady coding job doesn't qualify on 4chan, since here are mostly 20 year olds (I guess) and they have another view of the world. Not judging anyone here, btw.

>>3885180

Because Mathematicians are intimidated by Computers.
Computers have taken nearly all of their work.

In the future they will be as much of utility as knitters are this day.

>>3885193
You have no idea what a mathematican does, have you?

>>3885187
>only superficial knowledge of theory.

I'm not sure if i'm following but: The hell?

Isn't this what the masters program is there for?
Deepen the knowledge?

What if i want to go into hardware design?
Well I'll either go into some specific college or I'll take the masters program after i finished my normal "superficial" CS bach.
How is this bad?

>>3885180

Many people who haven't really studied CS think one of these two:
- It's the same as CE, or,
- It's easy discrete maths that you don't really need to study to understand: just give me a regular language and I'll find its minimum automaton in no time, and it's obvious that the minimum automaton of a language is unique.

The former just don't know what CS is at all. They are tricked into thinking it's the same as CE because it is taught side by side with CE, and from the outside in, it really looks like CS students often code, talk about programing languages etc, especially if you cannot understand anything else from their other discussion topics.

The latter have a better understanding of what CS is about. Usually, they've read or attended to a few introductory courses in some CS fields, or have read some wikipedia pages. As CS starts being taught only a bit late in one's scholarship, it indeed starts a bit slow. Nonetheless, digging a bit deeper under the surface would make them change their minds (assuming they aren't just obtuse). I'm not saying CS is better than "regular" maths, but it's the same as every field of maths: when you read about Thales and Pythagoras' theorems, you might think geometry is easy, yet we don't even know how to pack spheres into parallelepipeds. Same goes for CS. It's easy to get a rough understanding of the concept of most subfields, but there are really deep and interesting things below the surface.

>>3885187

I know CS majors who went straight to grad school no problem. You can easily go straight to industry with a CS degree (best chance is with internship experience), and you can easily go to grad school with one too. This is in the US by the way.

>>3885212
Also, to be honest, even pure CE isn't THAT straight-forward. A friend just forwarded these slides to me:
http://www.slideshare.net/olvemaudal/deep-c/
The amount of professional coders that could properly answer all the questions here is extremely low. Why? Because CE is taught and thought of as pure engineering of computers, and people more or less assume that knowing how to make a working program (or a bridge that doesn't collapse) is good enough. They don't know what's under it because they don't even know there is something. Understanding what can and what cannot be done in a system (from the point of conceiving the language, the linker and the compiler, to the point of coding a complex project with strange relations between compilation units) requires more than what it seems.

>>3885247
what exactly are you?
a CS major in year number?
what do you like, what are you specializing in (of would you like to)?

>>3885193
The hard parts of computer science are just math problems that get solved by mathematicians anyway, so saying that mathematicians are intimidated by computer science or computer scientists is just wrong. Most mathematicians have a pretty intuitive grasp of computer science and coding and enjoy it as an interesting past time. It's the kind of thing, like physics that most mathematicians would be able to switch over to with ease. The same is less true of computer scientists. Fewer of them have what it takes.

>>3885211
>hardware design

Then you better go into EE, not CS.

>Finished with CS degree
>Looking for a coding job
>All sound serious and retarded as fuck HERP WE'RE SRZ COMPANY U MUST WRITE SRZ CODE FOR OUR SRZ CUSTOMERZ
>Just want to make video games ;_;

What do? I'm seriously contemplating just getting an Admin job (been doing that for three years at University, so I think I'd have good chances getting in), and just coding some small games in my freetime, building up my portfolio..

>>3885247
that's a pretty funny presentation.

>>3885272
I majored in CS, now doing a PhD in coding theory / information theory.

I like pretty much everything that is discrete and theoretic enough.

>>3885286

Don't know much about getting into the video game industry, but why not just do one of those coding jobs? You'd probably make more money with a coding job than an admin job (not true all the time), and you also get additional coding experience on top of that.

>>3885331

As I said, all I hear when reading those job offers is what I described above. All so srs business.

If I am given a system, which I might have to describe using a generalized entropy, like the "q-deformed" Tsallis entropy, do I have to fit q from experiment or might I know it beforehand? How do I know the parameter q and/or how can I possibly obtain the degree of non-extensitivity via experiment? How can I measure the entropy of a part of the system, if the system is non-extensive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsallis_entropy

After some browsing I think the answer might be related to the fact, that for q-deformed entropy, the most probable distribution is not the Gaussian, but seems to be the q-deformed Gaussian:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-Gaussian

Then I played around a bit:

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/5841/qgaussian.png

Maybe one applies such an entropy concept if one comes across a distribution of such type, but that's only a guess. And I don't see why one would/could conclude non-extensitivity from a distribution?!

>>3885180
> It has come to my attention that many people here on 4chan regard Computer Science as shit/code monkey tier study.

> Why is that so?
Because you are easily trolled. I'm sorry, but it is the honest answer.

>>3885283
>mathematicians have a pretty intuitive grasp of computer science and coding

>grasp of CS
Well many mathematicians aren't bad with discrete maths, and indeed, if they were to start learning CS, they would probably not face more difficulty than when doing non-CS-related discrete maths. Also obviously, there are many fields of maths that CSists could not easily move into, because they do not work on anything similar. Yet I don't think it's enough to compare the two. (Good) mathematicians might be more versatile given time to learn a bit about the (CS) subfield, but that would take a longer time for them than for someone who has a CS background, in most cases. That said, would mathematicians perform better than CSists? Well it happens in fields where there happens to be a lot more maths than expected (in some subfields of graph theory for instance), but it's not generally true.

>grasp of coding
Now don't make me laugh, whenever you open a maths library, in any computer language and any math library, the code is awful. Mathematicians are clearly far better at CS than at CE. And I'm saying this as someone who has far more affinities with CS than CE, I'm not saying CE is harder or more interesting or anything, but really, codes from mathematicians seems to always be really bad. Not their fault:
- They never learned CE,
- What they do works, and they don't need more.
They have no reason to waste time learning CE when it wouldn't make their lives much easier afterward. But saying they code well is really untrue. They code. Probably better than most non-mathematician autodidacts, but that's all.

Isn't there more than "research" and "code monkey"?

I don't want to be a poor PhD faggot nor a code monkey. Aren't there interesting applications for software engineering?

>>3885387
software engineering == code monkey

>>3885394
well....If that's really the case then I'd agree with the people ITT saying to just get a math degree. It's like going into EE and then complaining about actually having to be a homosexual engineer instead of doing research. Just do physics dummy.

But I'm doing EE myself because I'm more interested in applications.

>>3885419

There are "code monkey" jobs, but there are a lot of engineering jobs you can get (mainly working with embedded systems). It all depends on the job.

>>3885375
ummm isn't computer engineering the design of actual logic circuits? Or does assembly stuff count?

>>3885449
are EEs also code monkeys just working with circuit programming instead? That sounds even worse. I'm thinking of trying bio/analog stuff to get away from that.

>>3885449
I guess it depends on the definitions. I included software engineering into my definitions of CE, here. Maybe I'm wrong. Because, anyway, fuck you, Terminology!

>>3885449
>ummm isn't computer engineering the design of actual logic circuits?
yeah thats part of it

>Or does assembly stuff count?
yeah thats part of it

>>3885394
That's facking BS
At least our SE prof would say that.

And going by the fact that he was listed as one of the 10 best Software Engineers in the world, I'd say he's right.

I mean I still can understand why some people say Software Engineering is a "feel good" word. But as he'd say:
"Coding gets you a job. Software Engineering gets you a career".

And what could I say against that, looking at his CV.
Of course you have to code.
But Software Engineering is as much about coding as astronomy is about telescopes.
(we heard that somewhere already, didn't we?)

>CompEng
>engineering
>faggotry

>Bioinformatics
>biology
>a hard science (lol)

>>3885661
>dick comparison about fields of science

You're a faggot harry.

>>3885700
>having a small science dick
>2011

>>3885321
What the fuck do you mean, discrete? That doesn't even make any sense!

>>3885855
it comes in lumps

>>3885855
Then why does it have a wikipedia page?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_mathematics

>hard science
>hard dick
choose wisely, younglings

>>3885914
Hard science makes my dick hard.

At my school the CS/SE/CE dichotomy goes like this in order of importance:
CS - Theory, Programming, Hardware
SE - Programming, Theory, Hardware
CE - Hardware, Programming, Theory

I like how the programmers are now being entirely placed under the code monkey umbrella. It used to be that that was a term for entry-level coders but now it's being applied to anyone who has a job where they write code for a living.

>>3885875
God damnit son, you have to put the "mathematics" part in there to make sense.

>>3885976
lrn2 context and stop shitposting

>>3885976
>>what do you like, what are you specializing in
>I like pretty much everything that is discrete and theoretic enough.
Everyone that knows what "discrete" means should understands this sentence. "I like to work on discrete problems" makes perfect sense. I just taught you the word and you believe I'm the one misusing it? Don't make me laugh.

>>3885993
(also this was me)

Because at some schools, the CS department=ITT Tech, i.e. learning languages and how to set servers up and shit. All the CS majors I know are into theoretical computing, algorithms, turing machines, complexity, etc.

http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2010/12/06/best-careers-2011-computer-software-engine
er

>"It's just a feel good word!"
>mfw

>>3886020
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2010/

>implying you don't regret not going into CS

>>3885184
>doesn't know what CS actually is
How the fuck is P vs. NP "baby tier"?


>>3885193
Ah I forgot that half of /sci/ is still in highschool. Continue being wrong together then.

>>3886020
>http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2010/12/06/best-careers-2011-computer-software-en
gine
>er

>implying it's not just a feel good word
>implying this doesn't just make "programmer" a put-down

lrn2 warm fuzzy, you asshole


I mean seriously, this is somehow different from programming? Making fucking apps for smart phones is engineering now?
>>3886028
every hipster nerd knows P vs. NP and no one actually gives a shit or even understands it. It's like namedropping some shitty indie band.

>>3886020
Aaaand another source
http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/10-best-jobs-2011

>2011
>not being a SE
Enjoy your shitty choice.
I'm out.

>>3886051

>wut is software planing
>I can wroyte wndowsn on my own!
>it oll jus programning

>>3886051
>every hipster nerd knows P vs. NP and no one actually gives a shit or even understands it. It's like namedropping some shitty indie band.

Seconded. Though, it's true that it clearly shows that CS isn't baby tier, unless all mathematicians just pass on it because they don't want to get an easy megadollar.

>>3886083
>planning how to program stuff
>somehow engineering


You have to plan how to do things in any career, dipshit.

Next you little bitches will demand the title MASTER OF MANAGEMENT AND THE ENGINEERING OF COMPLEX COMPUTING SYSTEMS, M.D., SO HARD LOL

>>3886098
>being ass mad because of a name

Hey guess what:
Computer Science is not a real science.

A hint: Nobody gives a shit. More at 11 motherfucker.

SE =|= just coding
That's all i said and that still stands.

>>3886143
but it's programming

your whole job is making programs

What does /sci/ think of BTEC national diploma in IT (level 3 Extended)?

They come from 4chon don't worry about it. Infact CS is very important it teaches you about things like algorithms and what not...things that if examined carefully you will notice parallels real life...so not only will it be a learning experience but you'll also learn some life lessons...go at it /x/bro

>>3886282
so is maths, engineering, excel-finance, physics, ...

>>3886312

*in

>>3886312
oops sorry thought I was on /x/ lol

>>3886313
but that's wrong

>>3886051
Are you retarded? It's very important in the CS community. Many people are working on it. You're like one of those kids that think saying E=mc^2 is just nerd bullshit. No, it's important and still relevant, but maybe not at your shit school, but that's true of any research oriented institute.

>>3886095
>undestands it
its to see if the complexity classes of polynomial time and non-deterministic polynomial time are the same, what's to get?
>gives a shit.
Again, maybe not at ITT Tech, but at real schools yes. You clearly don't come from such an environment. There are many people who work solely on finding the answer. In terms even you could understand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem#Consequences_of_Resolution

>>3886358
>Are you retarded? It's very important in the CS community. Many people are working on it. You're like one of those kids that think saying E=mc^2 is just nerd bullshit.


It is when you're just dropping terms on 4chan


Sup faggots, E = mc^2 and you fags don't know science. I'm an astrophysicist.

>>3886374
>dropping terms
How was I dropping terms, someone said CS is baby tier math, and I brought up an open problem in CS that is clearly not baby tier. Dropping terms != giving evidence.

Because of the dropout graph:

"Another way to figure out which fields are worth studying is to create the dropout graph. For example, I know many people who switched from math to computer science because they found math too hard, and no one who did the opposite. People don't do hard things gratuitously; no one will work on a harder problem unless it is proportionately (or at least log(n)) more rewarding. So probably math is more worth studying than computer science. By similar comparisons you can make a graph of all the departments in a university. At the bottom you'll find the subjects with least intellectual content."

>>3886282
You're an idiot.

>>3886282
>making software for drones 'n shit
>It's just low-life programing guize!

lolno

sure you are programming.
But that doesn't mean that's all what you are doing.

>>3886358
Wait wait, about not understanding it, I was talking about the typical /sci/ poster. I've read roughly one and a half bible of computational complexity (Papadimitriou being my fav), I've seen conference talks on Merlin-Arthur problems in quantum computational complexity, and I am I think well aware of what the problem and its implications are.

I was just saying that I agree with the previous poster on the fact that people who just write "P=NP" randomly in one of their posts often don't understand it.

And your sum as "are complexity classes of polynomial time and non-deterministic polynomial time the same?" is a bit fast, as it could be understood, if you were to explain it with these words to an outsider, as complexity classes of algorithms (*duut* wrong), or complexity classes of optimization problems (*duut* wrong again even though it's related).

For instance, ask someone who say "P=NP?" to give you an example of an object in "NP". Most likely, you're gonna hear one of:
- Huh, an algorithm that takes exponential time, like [if lucky: DFS] [if unlucky: computing n!]?
- Huh, any non-polynomial problem?
- Huh, any non-deterministic polynomial problem? (this guy happens to have a wikipedia tab still open from his last post)
- The traveling salesman?

(to be continued)

(second part)

So let's say he actually answered "the travelling salesman". Ask him "what's that exactly and why is it in NP?". Here's the best answer you can reasonably expect (and it's wrong). If you can point the things that are wrong here and explain that better, I'll admit you also know what you're talking about. Else, you're a bit of a hipster too. Deal? Anyway, answer:

It's the problem of finding the shortest circuit that lets you visit each node in a weighted graph (which models visits of cities). It's in NP because you cannot solve it in polynomial time with a deterministic Turing machine, you can only solve it in polynomial time if you use a non-deterministic Turing machine.

Your turn now. Impress me.

8000!=x

Calculate x.

>>3886561
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=8000!
Now go troll another board.

>>3886579

This'll sound silly, especially since I did OpResearch and actually examined the Travelling Salesman problem, but what exactly is a non-deterministic turing machine?

>>3886561
... must... resist... the calling of... fibs/fact

... must... RESIST...

fffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu

From personal experience, most computer scientists are just shitty mathematicians, and the legit computer scientists would have been better served doing a math degree undergrad and moving to comp sci for grad school. Comp sci undergrad is extremely useless if you're planning on graduate level work, and extremely useful if you are stopping after 4 years to be a code monkey.

>>3886516
Haha, yesterday I got shit for clarifying. Your fucking turn.

>>3886599
one problem can be solved through many ways

>>3886599
Assuming you know about automata theory, I'll start by answering "What is a non-deterministic automaton", and then non-deterministic automata are, to deterministic ones, what non-deterministic Turing machines are to deterministic ones.

So consider you have a deterministic automaton. It's a device that can be represented by a graph, with an initial node, one or more final nodes, and tagged arrows between the nodes. The tags on the arrows are letters. What you do with that is that you submit a word, say "abcca". You start in the initial state. If there's an arrow tagged "a" that points to another state, you move to that new state. From there, if there's an arrow tagged "b", you follow it, and so on until you've read the whole word. If after reading this word, you're standing on a final state, then the automaton answers "Yes", else it answers "No". Therefore, it discriminates between two kinds of inputs, just like Turing machines do (they only answer "yes" or "no").

So now, let's allow our deterministic automaton to have several arrows with the same tag leaving from the same state and going to different states. When you'll check a word, this time, the automaton will do, at the same time, all the possible runs at once. More precisely, when it can go into different states, instead of going to 1 and saying "my current state is this new state", it goes to each, and says "my current state is this set of states". From this set of states, reading a new letter leads it to a new set of states and so on.

>>3886687
(continued)

ND Turing machines also do that. At one point, they are in several different states. But the state of a Turing machine is much more complex than in an automaton, so you cannot simulate that behavior in an efficient manner.

The good thing about being able to be in many states at once is that if you're asked the question: "Is there a path in this graph that is shorter than 10 units?", you can make a machine that will, non-deterministically, initialize a "current path" kind of variable so that it's in a superposition of states where each state contains 1 of the possible paths, and then run the normal program of checking if the path is shorter than 10. All the paths will be tested simultaneously by the machine, at the same speed as the speed of a deterministic machine testing only 1 path. Assuming there were 2^n paths and checking a path takes c*n units of time, you just went from a total time of c*n*2^n to just c*n.

>>3886649
Wouldn't be fun to post here if there weren't any opposition though!

Most skeptics of computer science are past computer science majors who are now at a job which does not relate to their "useless" degree.

>>3886473
>>3886511
>sure you are programming.

yeah.....the job is making programs....you're a programmer.....there's more to making programs than typing.....but you're a fucking programmer

deal with it nerds

I never even implied it was bad, just that you little insecure faggots need inflated titles that don't even reflect your job

>>ITT, people confuse "CE" (computer engineering) with "SE" (software engineering)

CE is basically EE with a focus on computers.

The reason there's a weird dichotomoy between theory and programming in the way people view CS is that at some schools, CS is basically all about software engineering, where other schools make it more theoretical, and all anyone not studying CS sees is that people write code, so obviously the must be programmers (neither computer scientists, nor software engineers).

>>3886977
>implying the everyday programmer is working on algorithms and solutions that can be applied in such highly interdisciplinary problems as stable drone flight or planing and programming the software for a fucking plane
>implying this isn't your job as SE

You know I could agree with you if working on the regular SE projects would more be about writing your code alone in a closed room and less being locked up in a hall with a buffet, a pack of wild scientist and a problem nobody has the slightest clue about.

By your retarded definition Bioinformatics would only be programmers too.

>>3886977
And if you are so butthurt about the title: if SEs are not engineers, well what the hell are they for you then?
They are surely no scientists even though the name CS might imply that. And they are surely no programmers as their work goes >far< beyond that. Holy shit it does.

And most of all:
Who
the fuck
cares?
In my opinion you are the only one who is insecure here for being scared his "title" might be spoiled by a field of work that can't be exactly categorized.

>>3887568
>And they are surely no programmers as their work goes >far< beyond that.

lol

>>3887508
if bioinformaticists (lol) are paid to program, yes they're programmers. If they use their own programs for other purposes, they're not. What's so hard to understand?

Software engineers are like automotive engineers who build their own cars by hand. What is so hard to understand about this?

When the car is ready for use, it is mass-produced by machines. When the software is ready for use, it is mass-produced by computers.

Are automotive engineers not engineers if they pick up a wrench and implement their designs? Do we then call them mechanics?

Then why do we insist that all software engineers are programmers?

I will grant that the vast majority of people who have the job title of "Software Engineer" are mere programmers. Mechanics don't call themselves automotive engineers, but many programmers call themselves software engineers. Still, there are automotive engineers who are not mere mechanics, and software engineers who are not mere programmers.

>>3887866
Very nicely put.

>>3887866
>I will grant that the vast majority of people who have the job title of "Software Engineer" are mere programmers.


I accept victory.

>>3885247
that somehow makes programming seem even more boring than it actually is.

>>3888012
I liked these slides. It shows that computer science and software engineering are really apart. You clearly don't need to know that much about the languages you use when you only do CS. The level of the "random guy" in the slides is enough. He knows the basics, his code will be functional and probably not too ugly. However, he isn't a good software engineers. He is, as put by >>3887866, just a programmer.

>>3888388
I'm not sure that I would call the second one a software engineer for being better with the tools of the programmer.

Have the SE demonstrate competence in software design, project management, documentation, understanding how best to test a software system, etc.

Even if you know all the details of how different C compilers work, you still have to know how to structure your software project so that it's not an un-maintainable mess after three years and a dozen programmers. The vast majority of software development costs are due to maintenance - I'd argue that the most important part of being a SE is being able to design something with minimal maintenance costs.

Of course, if you're on an agile team, writing code that needs to be done now and may not be used in several years, then your approach may be different. Again, though, that is something one would use the expertise of a software engineer to decide.

>>3888440
>I'm not sure that I would call the second one a software engineer for being better with the tools of the programmer.

Agreed. I actually never said that she was. I said that he probably isn't. It of course takes more than perfect coding skills to be a software engineer. However, it does take some skill, or at least it does my the vision of a software engineer that does his job properly. Now if you count the "software engineers" (*giggles*) that designed most of my government's websites, then ok, even a dog can be software engineer if he happens to walk on the "return" key of a keyboard while the terminal's input is "make".