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To current students and teacher of CS: How important is maths?

Hi all,

I am a mature student (24) on an Access to IT HE course, looking to study CS at Uni in 2016.

However, I have very little maths knowledge. I'm talking about almost zero geometry, passable arithmetic and slightly better Algerba skills. I would certainly fail a GCSE higher maths test (high school leaving test).

Back in school, I was good at maths, and I'm working really hard to relearn everything, and making good progress. I think I could definitely get a B GCSE maths (the stated minimum requirement for my top pick) by the time Uni starts.

I can code a little, have a decent grasp of basic CS stuff like abstraction, data types, flow-control etc. I'm also slightly familiar with things like classes, OOP, testing etc. And I do have a few years of working in fairly respectable non-IT jobs.

If I do well on my current course, I can definitely get into University. The thing that's eating me up is that the course doesn't have much maths in it, and I feel like CS at Uni is a very maths heavy subject and I will struggle.

I've been thinking that maybe I should wait till 2017, get a solid A* in GCSE maths, program a little more, etc. Maybe this'll give me a better chance to succeed once I get to Uni.

What is your view? 2017 or now? How important is maths to Uni CS? What do I need to know? Could I push hard and make up the gap in time?

TY for your responses.

Reply 1

TopherC

I am studying Software Engineering so it may differ slightly to CS, that being said subjects that I have covered so far that include math components i.e Logics(Lambda Calculus, Propositional Logic), Computer Architecture(MIPS, HEX, Two;s compliment etc..) & Combinatorics(Graph Theory) tend to be the most maths heavy on my degree. However maths creeps into every class someway or another.

If you're aren't too great at maths then you may struggle, however some of my mates aren't great at maths and they just put in extra time where they could and they seem to be coping ok, so I reckon if you get a head start on some of the material that you are concerned with then I think you should be fine.

One thing I would recommend is brushing up on Scientific notation as I find it is heavily used in most lectures from Advanced Programming to Graph Theory(heavy notation use) and even to SQL's relational algebra and if you are not familiar with some of the most widely used terms you can become lost quite quickly.

In my opinion I would say maths is quite important to CS, in answer to you're question about waiting another year, I really couldn't answer that as its more of a comfort level thing. But what I would say is put in the work and it you will pick it up fairly quickly.

Computer Science / Software Engineering are brilliant degrees, there are so many interesting areas that you cover.

Hope that helps :smile: