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themcgruff | 10 years ago

(Full disclosure I work with the author, Noah, at Basecamp.)

Not sure if more important than math, but you are right it's extremely important.

One of the biggest on going problems we have isn't getting data in -- it's helping everyone get data out. Even with training sessions, documentation, and some fairly fleshed out "self help" tools, there is still confusion about where to look and how to "find" and "combine" the right data to answer a given question.

One of the ways we've partially solved this problem is through Tableau which is a commercial solution. (I was skeptical about whether we would stick with solutions like Tableau but it has been worth every penny.)

discuss

order

mamcx|10 years ago

Niklaus Wirth coin the idea

Programs = Algorithms + Data Structures

Is easy to thing that the "Algorithms" side (where is more obvious to apply math) is dominant. But instead, is the data side.

Math is worthless if data not fit it. You can't do binary search until the data is ordered/unique. Thats way I think math is secondary

Of course, datastructures have math on them, and still the data side dominate. Your O(1) get work when the datastructure is made for it...

Probably exist some counterpoint (Anyway, I'm more a database guy with minimal math skills) but I think for the the idea work most of time..