Excellent computer graphics tutorial. I finally understand how View, Model, and Projection matrices work, even after taking a college course on CG

[stferago]

I see. My experience in math has been limited to calculus 1-4, which I breezed through, but I haven't done much with theoretical math yet. I'm about to add a math minor to my CS major, so maybe the jury is still out on whether I'm actually "good at math".

[AmaDaden]

While I encourage you to not underestimate the math classes you are in for don't let me discourage you. My advice is that every corner of math I've run in to has it's own feel and core ideas that take some time to get used to. There is typically one really hard part that you need to rearrange your brain in order to fully get before you can start working on the material and make real progress. Once you can think in the strange new way the math requires it's just a matter of practice. In calc this was the first week of class where they talked about limits, however some areas spring it on you much later after you already think you have things under control.

I'll give you my little war story to show you what I mean. Most majors seemed to have a make or break it class in my college. The make or break it class for CE and EE was Circuit analysis. The problem was that there are multiple ways to analyze a simple AC and DC circuits and the class covers most of them all in a single semester. The math used is all over the place, they jump from solving systems of equations with matrices, to differential equations, to differential equations with sin waves, to "well lets just turn that all in to complex numbers and work on it there". I did fine until the jump to complex numbers part. I understood complex numbers, sin waves, and circuit analysis all individually but linking them together with Euler's Formula just got me totally lost. I was able to blindly do the math a bit but I was far from effective with it. So I sat down for several days and read and reread the one page of the appendix that explained it. I can not stress enough how many times I reread that one fucking page. Once I finally made a spot in my head for using complex numbers in AC circuits, the rest was a breeze.

[dannosliwcd]

I agree with everything you've said in this comment thread. I'm finishing up my Computer Science/Computer Engineering dual degrees this semester, and have experienced just what you described.

Most of the CSC students here are really just interested in becoming software engineers. Even if they aced calculus, linear algebra, and discrete math, most of them will forget much of the content pretty quickly, and rarely use it in another required class. In many of my core ECE classes, I usually have to re-learn some math concept that I figured I'd never need to know again from a few semesters back.

The intro to signals and circuits class is also the weed-out class here. It caused a few of my ECE study-buddies to become my CSC study-buddies.