Frustrated by a lack of math

David Weinberger extends the conversation around the hierarchical underpinnings of language and already the dialogue is going well over my head (well he was one of the original Cluetrainers!) -

"I'd only call that a tree if C can only hang from one branch. If it can hang from lots of branches simultaneously, we have something way messier and more complex.

Possibly a directed acyclic graph? (I only discovered DAGs a couple of months ago, but I think they're very cool indeed.)"

Er, say what? Ok, Wikipedia does clue me in but its bloody hard work wading through the topological and iterative deepenings!

Do you ever feel frustrated when trying to explain an intuition for which you just don't have the words or mathematical expressions? Actually I did cover this kind of stuff in university but its long gone I'm afraid and I really think its time to take a refresher course of some kind.

My nephew is studying for his Junior Certificate at the moment and the math he's doing is just about approaching the stage where I have to do some serious memory jogging to keep up with it. I'm planning to borrow his books over the next couple of years and sit my own personal Leaving Certificate again. My IQ is on the slippery slope and I need to take measures to stop the rot.

Comments

[Keith Gaughan]

I was wondering when you'd stumble across graph theory!

The article on iterative deepening depth-first search makes it sound more complex than it is (gotta love jargon). What's going on is that you do a depth-first search and keep track of how far from the root of the tree you are. Once you exceed the distance, you start backtracking. This way, you search only the nodes within x jumps of the root. If you haven't found what you're looking for, you increase x and start again.

There's really nothing too complex about graph theory, and of all the areas of mathematics, it's the one that has the most importance in CS and software development. It well, well worth studying, not least for patriotic reasons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton

[Mary Gilmartin]

Why dont you read the module material ul has online?
It will remind you of a lot of the basics. I still use their module material as references to topics I havent seen in a while.

http://www1.csis.ul.ie/curstudents/modules/

[James Corbett]

Thanks Mary, can you point me to a good maths module?

[James Corbett]

Cheers Keith, you make it sound so easy! ;-)

[Keith Gaughan]

It's much easier to explain with a whiteboard, believe me!