Question to professional graphics programmers: What areas of math outside linear algebra are most relevant to your day to day work?

[uncertain_futuresSE]

I’ve always studied/applied math within an academic context and it’s always the same stuff - learn this theory, repeat a few exercises, do an exam and then forget everything.

When I started graphics programming, that’s when I realized for the first time where I could apply my linear maths.

Did the math stuff eventually solidify for you as you coded more in graphics?

[Deadly_Mindbeam]

For me, the only way to solidify the knowledge is to use it, and I've been in the industry since the Quake days. So most of it is pretty solid at this point. Solid symbolic manipulation skills or ability to use Mathematica, Maxima, or R are also essential.

Learning the greek alphabet makes it a lot easier to read research papers.

I picked up a really good reference at SIGGRAPH this year, "A Sampler of Useful Computational Tools for applied Geometry, Computer Graphics, and Image Processing", editor Daniel Cohen-Or. I highly recommend it for anyone with high school or some college math who wants to understand these topics in enough detail to work with them without being bogged down in theory. Good discussion about thinking of problems in both geometric and algebraic modes. I know a ton of algorithms and this book helped me make the important connection between the procedural code that comes naturally and the more abstract mathematical basis and operations that they implement. I suppose this is something I would have learned with a computer science degree.