You Don’t Have to Be Good at Math to Learn to Code – The Atlantic

It’s an interesting and open question.  Nathan Ensmenger suggests that we have no evidence that computer scientists need a lot of mathematics (math background has been correlated with success in CS classes, not in success in a CS career), but the emphasis on mathematics helped computing a male field (see discussion here).  Mathematics has both been found to correlate with success in CS classes, and not correlate with success in object-oriented programming (excellent discussion of these pre-requisite skill studies in Michael Caspersen’s dissertation).  It may be true that you don’t have to be good at mathematics to learn to code, but you may have to be good at mathematics to succeed in CS classes and to get along with others in a CS culture who assume a strong math background.

People who program video games probably need more math than the average web designer. But if you just want to code some stuff that appears on the Internet, you got all the math you’ll need when you completed the final level of Math Blaster. (Here’s a good overview of the math skills required for entry-level coding. The hardest thing appears to be the Pythagorean theorem.)

Source: You Don’t Have to Be Good at Math to Learn to Code – The Atlantic