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Mathematics Skills More in Demand Than Ever
knownsense writes "Business week has a nice article (feel good, low on detail, vague numbers) on the rise of maths and mathematicians in a world that is increasingly obsessed with statistics, advertising, search engines, and algorithms. The article also deals with issues of privacy. How has mathematics, statistics and other number driven aspects of life impacted you in the last decade?"
There's actually a framing calculator that has a much more useful square root function on it. It will return values that aren't decimal so it's easier to to use with a tape measure.
If you think that was bad, you should look at how most framers put up rafters. My dad could do all those measurements in his head. On one house we did, my dad actually had me use the blue book (the one you get when you buy a speed sqaure) and the framing calculator to figure up the roof system. We still finished that house faster and better than the guys down the street who put a "pilot rafter" up to mark it by eye and monkeyed with it until it worked out. Most framers just spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling with the book and making prototype rafters until they are sure they will work.
There called Axioms, and they are needed in all formal logic. If you really don't understand this concept visit:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Axiom.html
Many of today's technologies wouldn't be possible without modern mathematical topics like Fourier Analysis, the Shroedinger equation, and Symbolic Logic just to name a few.
Most of us use these technologies on our ipods, cars, and computers without even thinking about them.
Yay, Math!
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
If you have a Python 2.4 interpreter handy:
>>>l = ['01011001', '01001111', '01010101', '01001110', '01000101', '01010010', '01000100']
>>>''.join([chr(int(i, 2)) for i in l])
'YOUNERD'
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoedelsIncompleteness Theorem.html
By the time you've rhymed one line, I've already busted ten; You rap in exponential time and I'm big-O of log(n).
It hasn't "impacted" me at all -- unless it screwed with my wisdom teeth or made me constipated. It might, however, have affected me in some way.
The illiterate slashdot hordes... resist the evil of corporatespeak. Impact, leverage, transition... they're all nouns, people.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
May I point out that not all reasonable people believe that math is our own creation per se. (No, I don't support Intelligent Design). You will find textbooks filled with discussions on the nature of mathematics, varying from pure Platonistic arguments down to Positivism and a plethora of other ideas. Godel himself was more of a Platonist than most of us would anticipate. In fact, most of us carry an implicit Platonistic attitude. As a great example, almost every science headline resorts to "X discovers Y!". Now, in order to be discovered it had to be there in the first place! There they are, the per Our scientific community has an implicit Platonistic view and I think most people don't realize that until you expose it. (Well now you should know!)
As for Godel's Incompleteness, it is an amazing result but it's not a silver bullet for math. It killed Hilbert's program, that's for sure, but it's hardly the end of math. Technically speaking, we can disallow Godel's result by fiat through some clever limitations, but the problem with that of course is the very fact that we're disallowing by fiat. And not to mention, not all of mathematics is affected either (ex. third order logic seems to be doing fine).
I've listened to dozens of arguments trying to outright discredit math based on Godel's results, and I must say, 99% of the time the speakers only have superfluous knowledge of the result and yet they extrapolate to derive amazing results. It reminds me of AI (Artificial Intelligence) where every other psychologist talks about the 'limitations of machines' blatantly unaware that what they are really referring to is the 'limitations of algorithms'. It's a succinct point, but before you build your mansion, might as well check the foundations first, right?
This may surprise those of you who assumed that the British contraction is older than the N. American one, but the opposite is in fact true.
The first use of 'math' recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1849, whereas its earliest recorded entry for 'math' is in 1911, penned by the English War Poet Wilfred Owen
The well-known plural form 'mathematics' is to be compared with terms such as physics and metaphysics. In early use, the subjects were often referred to in the singular, as matamatik, fiskyke, and metaphesyk. In plural, they connoted something entirely different. For instance, physics was the title of Aristotle's collected physical treatises. 'Mathematics' would be used to denote the collection of the various branches of mathematics, such as geometry, algebra, etc. In modern usage, 'mathematic' and 'physic' have fallen by the wayside and the plural forms have taken their place.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
Financial Insdustry, paricularly credit analysis and credit scoring. Building custom score cards using analytics is big business here in the US. The really good thing about it is that every finance company has a score card used to determine credit worthiness but they are ALL custom. It would be suicide for the company to share their credit decisioning work, so they hire private consultants to constantly reinvent the wheel.
I should know, it's been working great for me! I'm sure that Europe (if not France) has a similar situation...
You're only partially right. Axioms are statements that (1) can't be proven, and (2) you assume are true, and everything is built upon them. However, there are other, non-axiomatic, statements in any formal system that cannot be proven either true or false. That's what the parent was talking about (hence the mention of the Godel's incompleteness theorem). :)
BTW, if you're a CS major, you've encountered this in the form of the Halting Problem
People in the first world are living longer due to medical techniques and drugs that didn't exist years ago. Now with respect to the third world this may be.
THIS is valid.
Exactly how are you going to compel people to do this stuff? Outlaw individual ownership of automobiles? Additionally, fruit and veggies aren't that expensive as far as the developed countries go.
Why is it the responsibility of the developed world to square this away? This sounds suspiciously like a hint at wealth redistribution. We won't even go into how you intend to accomplish this. If you're even thinking socialism or global taxation, go home. It would never happen. If you're thinking charity, well people in the developed countries are already showing "donor fatigue".
I disagree. Peaceful space exploration must go on for the advancement of the human race. If you chose to cut military spending I could see it.
Again with the global issues. The reality is that I share more cultural and economic bonds with my fellow citizens, therefore their well-being is more important to me. You've stated some global problems with approximately zero feasible concrete solutions to any of them.
Whether a CS department originally descended from the maths or engineering sections of a school (and the corresponding implications that has for emphasis in curricula) depends on the school. For example, at the University of Texas - Austin, it is plainly descended from the mathematics department, and at the Dallas branch of UT (which historically had much closer ties to industry and thus a much strong applied focus than the more theoretical/pure-research focus of the Austin campus) they're descended from the engineering faculty, to the point that they offer a separate degree in Software Engineering at the undergraduate and graduate level, in addition to a normal CS program.
I don't say this to denigrate mathematics or the usefulness thereof, but to imply that engineering/applied approaches to the field are somehow lesser is kind of off base. Both approaches have merit and are required to do excellent work. For example, you can prove the formal validity of your software until the cows come home, but if your requirements gathering phase sucks your customers will hate you regardless. ;) Which approach you favor depends more on temperment than any objective measure of utility.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Not to say that all engineering departments are like that - obviously there are quite a few exceptions. However, that's how it is - Engineering is applied mathematics after all. My CS degree consisted of probably just as much math as computers, if not more. Calc 1/2/3 and lots of mathematical electives.
It's interesting that math teaching hasn't caught up with modern needs. Engineers need math, and there is a lot of focus on engineering mathematics. In practice that means lots of calculus and probably some linear algebra. That's ideal if you're going into civil or mechanical engineering, but modern electrical engineering or software engineering has very different needs in the way of mathematics. There is a real need to get serious abstract algebra considered as vital engineering mathematics for electrical and software engineers. If you're doing more CS focused software engineering then courses in category theory really ought to be in there too. Hopefully such a shift will be occurring in the next few years (or decades - sometimes it's baffling how slow things move).
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The first thing that comes to my mind is that you can set up a business that does consulting. You can build up a portfolio of intellectual property- develop algorithms to solve real world problems and then create implementations of your algorithms. License what you produce.
:)
For example, I am no math genius, but I am trying to make my own software that will extract tone information from a recording. The intended application is very marketable, and I have a customer waiting already.
Identify your strengths, identify what interests you, identify some need in the marketplace, and take all of these into consideration.
Off the top of my head, there is a market for developing algorithms for signal processing(audio, video,whothehellknows), financial analysis, statistics.. Or you can develop optimizations on existing algorithms.
Cheers, bonne chance.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
I would highly recommend the Schaum's Outline series. I'm a physicist, and I have quite a few of them on my shelf next to my textbooks.
They are extremely useful for reviewing material that you once new, and they're not too bad as a text for exploring things you've never formally learned.
Jim