• CashewNut 🏴󠁢󠁥󠁧󠁿@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    as a door-opener

    You say that but they still need to teach you the “why”. For example I did A-level maths which was a door to learning discrete maths in uni. Matrices, graphs, etc.

    In 20yrs as a software dev I never used any of it. Only needed basic arithmetic.

    To this day I’ve got no bloody clue what the point of matrices are.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      I used them in computer graphics and game programming. As a regular software dev, not so much.

    • onion@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      They’re used for manipulating vectors.
      Just like how in
      v
      the a makes the vector v longer or shorter, in
      v
      M can change the vector, for example rotate it.

      Just like vectors and other mathematical objects, matrices are purely theoretical concepts. There is no direct real-life meaning to them.
      However, there are a bunch of real-world problems where matrices can be put to use to calculate something meaningful.