‘Five Minute Argument’ is the personal site of Bobby Jack, a London-based Web Developer.
‘Maths games’ may have an useful function to fulfil, but don’t overestimate their importance.
In Maths is the bedrock of the digital age, Victor Keegan discusses computer games with a strong mathematical bent, either in the explicit form of educational titles, or as an implicit core of mainstream games such as World of Warcraft. Victor also mentions that:
skills acquired in multiplayer online games are exactly those needed in industry as the digital revolution proceeds
Call me a short-sighted cynic, but I beg to differ. I’ve always been slightly uncomfortable with the link between almost all computer-based work (ranging from IT support through to design and programming) and mathematics. Partly because maths has never been my strong suit, but mainly because I just don’t see the link. At almost no time during my 10-year-old development career have I needed to make use of any maths much beyond the most rudimentary algebra.
Computer programming, especially the higher-level, abstracted versions of it that we practise nowadays, is more of a logical, analytical skill than having anything to do with raw calculation; that’s the computer’s job, after all. And, therefore, I don’t think that improving the education standards in mathematics via games is really going to help a generation of web developers and software engineers. In fact, probably the only group of programmers that really need to know their maths is … well, games programmers.
‘Five Minute Argument’ is the personal site of Bobby Jack, a London-based Web Developer.
Mon 1 Feb 2010 01:57
daragh said:
I don’t think the point of emphasising the importance of mathematics education with regards to digital technologies is based on the idea that people working in these areas will have to use specific things they'd learned how to do in school or will rely upon performing basic mental arithmetic, it’s rooted in the idea that mathematics is the most broad way of mentally modelling and conceptualising systems and working with them in an abstract manner that can then be translated back into a usable form.
Mathematics itself is a way of describing reality and systems in a very practical and useful manner and I think the ability to work in a highly abstracted way such as this is essential to anyone who wishes to do any sort of design or analytic work. I would even suggest that anyone who is competent in these fields is probably capable of a reasonably high standard of maths, despite their opinions based on unpleasant memories of school.
I realise your argument wasn’t against mathematics per se, but it’s incredibly erroneous to suggest it isn’t that important on the grounds that it’s all about raw calculation and number crunching.