Post #2103439

2026-04-29 10:28 UTC

@boarders None of the cs degrees I've interacted with give enough background in lower years in things like calculus and probability/information theory and data handling methods. In many places it's probably possible with students choosing a very specific combination of options

Replies (3)

@Andrev@types.pl 2026-04-29 10:51

@julesh @boarders Happy to report that EPFL still does but you'd have to be in the "communication systems" degree to be forced to take the advanced courses, in CS we had: Information theoryAnalysis I and IIProbability ITheory of computation Physics Linear Algebra Algorithms If you were communication you'd have additionally as compulsory: Analysis IIIProbability II (stochastic methods, my nightmare) Looking at the curriculum today, communication systems has moved "introduction to machine learning" as a compulsory and "data-intensive systems" is now a compulsory for computer science. The point being, that imaginary curriculum already exists, just not in the UK

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@boarders@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-29 14:28

@julesh The thing I do agree with is there is an emerging discipline of "information science" which one could imagine includes some array of: statistical learning, information theory, theoretical neuroscience, markov processes + martingales, complex systems theory, signal processing, machine learning, nascent science of machine learning + NN interpretability, machine vision etc. I don't agree with the idea that typical computer science is dead or the traditional subjects taught are no longer valuable, nor that it is ahistorical to keep going with this discipline. The main changes I would like to see is a greater emphasis on formal scientific knowledge, formal methods, verification etc. and less on thinking teaching should primarily have the instrumental purpose of operating as trade school for massive corporations that don't even provide funding for the pleasure of dictating the curriculum

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@cbaberle@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-29 18:47

@julesh @boarders amusingly, I managed to take almost all of those prereqs during my UG out of pure interest in the math, without any motivation at the time for understanding machine learning. but i don't think my experience is at all representative of the average CS major (or CS and Philosophy major, in my case).

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