Debate on... Math and Computer Science [Home Thread]

Whut. :exploding_head:

Fun fact: In maths I am used to ℕ meaning “without 0” in mathematics while in CS it’s always “with 0”. I mean, I understand: The CS peeps wouldn’t be able to count anything otherwise :wink: But why mathematicians think that 0 is not natural is beyond me.

Interestingly, if somebody says “integer” then I don’t consider this to be a normal word but rather a technical term (as I’m German), so when I hear “integer” I always think “limited subset of numbers from ℤ”, e.g. “64-bit integer” :woman_shrugging:


When it comes to reading, to my great amazement I discovered that I’m currently in a streak of maths-related fiction books :joy_cat:
The first one was 博士の愛した数式 where one of the protags is a retired maths professor, and there is quite some maths talk in there; then 容疑者Xの献身 where one of the protags is a senior high school maths teacher (not that much maths vocab in here but some nice monologues on the beauty and usefulness of mathematics), now I’m reading 1Q84 where one of the protags is a prep school maths teacher (very little maths vocab so far but a nice monologue on why he likes maths), and すべてがFになる is starting soon (there is apparently a bunch of CS talk in that one). The second and fourth books are written by engineering professors, so I guess that explains a lot :rofl:

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