Math For Computer Scientists

I have never been a math major, nor have I ever been interested in pursuing research in math, but during my degree in Physics I took a lot of math courses, and am pretty comfortable with math overall. I feel that my math background has served me well in obtaining competitive grades in the math courses required for my present degree in computer science. Computer science education is interesting in comparison to Physics because it is a much younger field of study, and there are a variety of different career paths in the computer industry. 

An interesting question that pops up a lot is how much math should computer students be required to learn, considering that some career paths in industry do use a lot of math, and others do not. It is a requirement in most Universities for computer students to learn elementary derivative and integral calculus, linear algebra, and discrete mathematics. Calculus and linear algebra are useful for computer simulations of complex systems, and computer graphics, but most students won't end up working in those fields. Discrete mathematics is very useful for understanding how computers and algorithms work, and most computer programmers would benefit from knowing some, but perhaps they could do without the calculus and linear algebra.

In my opinion, since there are uses for calculus and linear algebra in computer science, it's important that students get exposure to them so that those career paths that require them are not closed off entirely. It may be the case that these topics could come later the student's education, once they decide to pursue such a career path. Furthermore, I think that students gain valuable problem solving skills by taking these math courses, even if the content will not be useful in practice for their career. For these reasons, I think it is justified for these math topics to be taught to all computer science students in University.