Should I try for a computer science degree?

I am precisely like you, OP. I can do an algebraic proof, but at some point in solving any equation, I make a sign error or something and have to go back and do it six more times. First, which degree: "computer engineering", at every school I've ever heard of, has been about hardware, not software. You'd be designing circuits, not writing code. This is Bad Math Territory, primarily because they make you take a bunch of electrical engineering. Next, "software engineering". This is generally a curriculum of programming plus analysis and study of how to manage a software project. You know, not just how do we solve the problem, but how do we write the solution that's going to take fifty people two years? Finally, "computer science". This is the study of computational algorithms. Lots of programming, and lots of theoretical study. The idea is that you'll be able to develop novel algorithms. This is what I took, and graduated summa cum laude in. I'm not mathematically gifted, even in the theoretical... but, programming is sequenced logic... there're lots of ways to sequence logic, in your head, other than as mathematical equations. I approach programming from a linguistic standpoint, mainly. You talk about the "mechanics" of math. That's called "arithmetic". Even if it's taking an integral, it's still arithmetic. The whole damn point of computers is that they do the arithmetic, not you. Once you get through school, you're golden. As for math classes with numbers: I took differential and integral calculus and linear algebra, as well as two semesters of the mandatory "discrete mathematics" that compsci programs everywhere make you take. The discrete math course was actually mad easy, since it's mostly an introduction to about 50 different topics--they don't go into enough depth for them to be difficult, usually. Then, having made it through the numbers hell, I got into numberless math classes: finite automata, language theory, abstract algebra (*shudder*). Those were hard, but not in the same way that eighth grade math class was. Even in the non-numbers classes there were a lot of questions like "how many permutations are there?" that required a bit of arithmetic. But, I always got a calculator. Do NOT go for IT or IS or any of that shit. Don't waste four years of school learning how to plug in network cables. Go ahead and do the real deal. You'll do fine.

N-thing the sentiment that I was in a similar boat and pulled off a degree, but it wasn't without some heartbreak. I have a BA with Computer Science as my second major. Calculus I/II and the second half of Linear Algebra were a b-i-t-c-h. Calculus probably would have been easier if it focused on the function and theory, but every course I took had the god (!) awful (!) James Stewart textbook with the violin on the cover and all of my profs denied the use of calculators. The James Stewart approach was to make you muck deeply through the hardest possible way to solve a problem and then in the next chapter show you the, you know, not-crying-tears-of-blood way that everybody actually uses. Minus forgetting huge chunks of middle school algebra and the mucking through the most convoluted and involved solution necessary, Calc I would have been a breeze, so maybe with the right prof or the right community college class the higher level stuff can be done, especially since you've already been successful at Calc. Women in CS have the added advantage of having their pick-of-the-litter choice of geeky, female-starved study partners. Use this power responsibly. Also: worth looking into scholarships. Back when I was in school, women in CS were freaking rare and very welcome. On re-read, maybe you have dyscalculia or something similar? (IANAD) If that's the case and you get it diagnosed and go to your campus accessibility support department and they can make arrangements for you for longer tests, calculators or other goodies. Some CS departments teach in Scheme or other Lisp-like languages that have some pretty complicated algebra-like syntax that's easy to mix up. In any event, you might want to play around with your department's language of choice and see if you can grok it at least a little on your own. And while it's probably true that CS skills are less marketable to HR departments than TODAY-NOW-BUSINESS-AND-INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY shit, Computer Science theory is immortal and those other skills stale quickly and are a joke to anybody who knows better. We all know the geek hierarchy goes Pure Math majors -> (Electrical Engineering || Computer Science) -> Information Science -> Information Technology -> Silly Business degree with the tech flavor of the day added as an afterthought. To be a real killer app, what you want to do is get the CS degree and join some open source projects/take some certification courses on the side so you can throw all of the techs du jour on your resume right next to your never-fades, never-dull CS badassery. And once you have the CS fundamentals down, no new-tech will ever foil you. You'll have the superpower to learn new systems and new languages to a functional level in a week, tops, while all the IT majors will stumble and fumble from scratch every time. IT and business degrees are a one-off. CS is for the long haul. Sufficeth to say, I didn't take my own advice, but I'm pretty happy about where I landed (outside tech for the most part) none-the-less.

Computers are really great at doing addition and multiplication all by themselves, so computer scientists don't worry about that kind of stuff. They worry about, on a foundational level, things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automata_theory. Note that there aren't tables of numbers any of those Wikipedia pages; it's all conceptual. I think you will do quite well. Read up more on theoretical computer science, and take as many of those kinds of courses, instead of "how to program in Java."

since you can always just try programming and see if you like it. ... No sense trying to guess whether you'd be good at it when it's so easy to actually try it. posted by equalpants at 1:23 PM Best answer thus far, IMO. Your post sounded (to me) as though you're putting just a whole lot of weight into this decision -- and any big decision like this is weighty, for sure -- but you're trying to make the decision when you just flat don't have enough input. And it sounds (to me) that you're seeing it as either this or nothing, and that is way off base. You've taken three college courses. Take three more, but only after (or at the least while) you are checking out some computer languages as suggested by equalpants. Check it out -- you're going to go to school! Whoa! What a great thing. You might get in there and find that your interests lay in a totally different direction. There is no hurry. Seems to me you are seeing this as job training and not 'getting an education' or what have you, being broadened, opening out horizons. You expressed that you're sortof bleh about the whole show and how could you not be, considering that you've focused your intent on one tiny ray in the rising sun of your new day? Get into the groove of school. Date some of the kids there, if you're single -- instead of dealing with all of us old cobs who are all worn down, all burnt out on women and life, you're now with young people who are bright-eyed and dumb, and looking for life experience, and that you've got, and can give to them, so long as they help you in this one horses ass math class, or whatever. You can do most anything you set your heart on -- you know this by now, you're not a kid. So if you're going to give yourself this gift, that of getting an education, if you're going to take the time and expend the effort to go through school, then go there and take the time to find out what you really want to do, and then set your heart on that, and tell us about it as it unfolds.

Listen to Netzapper. He's laid it out perfectly. In engineering and the sciences, we rarely do arithmetic! That's what computers and calculators are for. If you did well in physics, calc, and geometry, you have no reason to say you are bad at math. You are bad at arithmetic, a small field of mathematics. One for which we get to use calculators ALL THE TIME!

Well, there won't be too much arithmetic; computers can handle that, after all. But programming has some similar "mechanics"-type issues, especially when you're first starting out--remembering the syntax for various things, etc. Will these mechanics trip you up the same way math calculations do? Who knows? This is all academic, since you can always just try programming and see if you like it. Search around the web for introductory programming stuff; there are lots of free languages to download. No sense trying to guess whether you'd be good at it when it's so easy to actually try it.

I'm curious about how well you did in geometry. That's the only pre-college class I took where I had to write any proofs, and I was terrible at them. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that much of the math I did for my CS degree involved proof after proof. Of course, there were also three quarters of calculus, a quarter of linear algebra, a quarter of differential equations...in my program there was a lot of grunty math classes to get through just to say you'd done them. YMMV - knowing where you're planning to go to school might help a lot. Night school can mean a lot of different things. I've just spent my last three weeks doing a basic arithmetic problem at work. However, I got assigned to do it because "crinklebat likes math". You definitely won't be the only person in your class who would embarrass herself at long division. Hell, I'm pretty terrible at long division by now myself.

Basically the fewer actual numbers involved, the better I am at solving a problem. Go for it. For a somewhat similar example, I'm in EE, and in any given bit of math I do it's unlikely there'll even be any "actual numbers" beyond a few 2's, root 2's, e's and pi's At the end you can put your formula into a calculator or MATLAB if you need to run numbers through it.

It sounds like you may have mild numerical dyslexia, which my brother apparently has. I'd be very surprised to hear that it ends up having any impact on your CS career, but hey, you'd probably realize pretty early on if it did, before you had managed to come up with compensation mechanisms (which most of us have for some weakness or other anyway). Give it a go, see if you love it, see if you honestly have that much of a harder time at it than other people and whether or not it will be worth it to you to push through if that's the case. I was never the strongest person in my year at math, but I'm still at grad school for a physical science and I've managed to work around it successfully. I'm sure you could too if you decide you really want to.