Math, Fear and Computer Programming

Interesting post by Howard Owens on math, fear and computer programming. Howard got some training in programming, wasn't much good at it (his opinion) but it has helped in the newsroom where there is an increasing need for people with computer skills. Makes sense, when you think about some of the trends that are affecting news organizations. Advice from Howard: if you have fear of math, no worries. Math has little to do with it:

Programming is more about grammar and punctuation than math formulas. It’s also about logic, and the disciplined mind that is usually the math mind helps, but logic is also something that can be learned.....

The point here is that if you’re a journalist and have an opportunity to make a contribution to your career, your company or to our industry through programming, don’t let the math thing scare you. You can do it. Eighty percent of programming (if my math is right) is easy. If I can do it, you can.

Reminds me: Stephen Baker at Business Week is writing a book about the ascendance of math in business. Wonder if he will talk about journalism. In the meantime, recall what Stephen said in his January 2006 cover story, "Math Will Rock Your World." You may not need to learn math, but more and more we are living at a time where it pays to be a quant.

The world is moving into a new age of numbers. Partnerships between mathematicians and computer scientists are bulling into whole new domains of business and imposing the efficiencies of math. This has happened before. In past decades, the marriage of higher math and computer modeling transformed science and engineering. Quants turned finance upside down a generation ago. And data miners plucked useful nuggets from vast consumer and business databases. But just look at where the mathematicians are now. They're helping to map out advertising campaigns, they're changing the nature of research in newsrooms and in biology labs, and they're enabling marketers to forge new one-on-one relationships with customers. As this occurs, more of the economy falls into the realm of numbers. Says James R. Schatz, chief of the mathematics research group at the National Security Agency: "There has never been a better time to be a mathematician."

Advice to young folks contemplating a career? Know thyself -- you should love what you do, do what you love. But if you have an irrational fear of math and science, try to get over it. It can't hurt to learn a little about reason and numbers -- good for the mind, and good for almost any career -- and who knows, you might actually like it.

Comments

[Howard Owens]

Thanks for the link ... language is a funny thing, so these are really minor points, but as a matter of clarification.

I said some people might think I wasn't good at it. I happen to think, by the time I stopped programming, I was pretty darn good at it.

I no longer write code for a living.

I'm no longer, technically, in a newsroom.