[Haskell-cafe] In what language...?

[Alexander Solla]

On Oct 26, 2010, at 4:21 PM, Richard O'Keefe wrote:

> Number theory would probably be out
> except maybe in a 2nd or 3rd year course leading to cryptography.

Number theory is one of those weird cases.  They are discrete  
structures, but  advanced number theory uses a lot of complex analysis  
and "calculus" on other complete spaces, like the p-adics.

Difference equations show up in Knuth's "Concrete Mathematics", his  
tome on discrete mathematics.  The theory of difference equations is  
the discrete analogue to the theory of differential equations.   
Surprisingly, the continuous/differential case is more general, since  
integral solutions can be modeled by constant functions.