system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: why is math (statistics, calculus, etc) so important for a strong programmer?
gpt
There are lots of areas of programming that require only basic math. If you're doing development for a moderate-sized web site or app, it's quite possible you'll almost never use any math, and never anything beyond things taught in high-school algebra.

More generally, some programmers use a lot of math all the time, some hardly use math at all.

There are many more specialized areas of programming that require a lot of math. Computer graphics uses a lot of trigonometry and calculus, so pretty much any game that requires physics or 3-d rendering uses a lot of math. Video and audio compression uses Fourier analysis. Cryptography uses number theory. Those are just a few examples - there are lots of specialties. Good programmers often need to have at least some familiarity with those areas, even if that isn't their area of expertise.

Quite often large-scale software engineering requires more math - for example web sites that need to scale to millions of users. It's hard to properly optimize sites to handle a lot of traffic without a good foundation in probability and statistics.

A degree in Computer Science typically covers many of those things, which is why there's a math requirement. In addition, Computer Science involves a lot of mathematical analysis of programs, including determining what's possible to compute, determining asymptotic runtime and memory usage, and mathematical proofs of bounds and of correctness.