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?"

Comments

Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[sbaker]

We all know that advancements in technology can cost people their jobs. However, in the case of the building industry in Texas, the effect of introducing new technology can often be somewhat delayed.

Back in 1997, my new house was in the slow process of changing from plans on paper into bricks on concrete. One of the tasks that has to be done early on is to lay out the shape of the house accurately onto the land. My builder uses a sub-contractor to do that - and I had occasion to watch him work. He arrived in a beat up old pickup truck with four 'migrant workers' sitting in the back. In order to lay out the initial 'bounding rectangle' of the building, they follow this algorithm:

* Measure a baseline for the long edge of the rectangle. Mark it with two stakes hammered into the ground and tie a length of nylon string between them.

* Tie a second piece of string to one of the stakes and measure out the width of the rectangle along it. Eyeball the angle between the new edge and the baseline so it's roughly 90 degrees and you have an 'L' shape. One guy holds the string there.

* Do the same at the other end of the baseline. Now you have a 'U' shape and two guys are holding the open ends of the strings.

* Take a third piece of string - equal in length to the length of the rectangle. Give one end to each of the two guys who are already holding string. 'jiggle' them until all three strings are tight. You now have a parallelogram made of string, staked out at two corners.

* Now take two long tape measures and with one guy standing at each corner of our parallelogram, position the tape measures along the two diagonals of the parallelogram. With two guys holding the tapes on the baseline stakes and the other two holding onto the strings and shouting out the lengths of the diagonals, they jiggle the two free points until all of the strings are tight and the two diagonals tape measures are reading the same lengths. This requires a lot of shouting, cursing and everyone telling everyone else which way to move.

* Now they have a rectangle - so they bash in two more stakes and then level the whole thing with a really impressive-looking laser contraption.

Well, I watched this with some amusement - and asked why they didn't just calculate the length of the diagonal. The boss guy said that you couldn't do that - "It's impossible". I told him about Pythagoras' theorem. With the aid of a calculator (he didn't know what that funny 'square-root' key was for), I was able to show him how easy it is to calculate the length of the diagonal and do away with all the ugly 'jiggling'.

"Wow!" he said. Then he thought for a moment - "Now I'll only need three guys to hold the string!"...and fired one of them on the spot! I thought he was kidding - but the next day when they were measuring out the place for the garage, there was one less guy holding the string.

So, a 2,500 year old technological advance cost some poor guy his job. ...sigh...

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Funakoshi]

While I appreciate the story, I think your sub-contractor was pretty brutal, at the very least he should have had a theodolite (construction instrument) to turn his 90 degree angles for him. I sell construction equipment and there is no doubt that it is difficult to "teach an old dog new tricks", the technology available to those companies is mind boggling, but equally as amazing is the fact that they dont search it out to improve their effeciency.

For example, the layout contractors I speak to (should) use instruments that allow them to layout their forms with not only no string, but also no paper. Plans are transfered to ruggedized PDAs, attached to instruments that calculate locations based on distance and angles from given landmarks, and stakes are pounded. They can increase productivity by 30% with very little effort at all. Some land suveyors are doing layout with GPS systems with sub-centimeter accuracy and are seeing 50-70% increases in productivity.

I dont mean to flame the parent, he/she is correct, the users in that industry dont use enough technology, but it is available to them.

PS: I think, no matter how much frickin money they make, they ALL drive beat up pickups

Making money as a freelancer mathematician

[Lakedemon]

I would like to know if there is a way to make money out of maths skills, as a freelancer.

I mean, I have a phd and I'm quite good at maths, having solved the 3 problems who where thrown at me in 1 year and a half (instead of the regular 3 years) but what I would like to do is :
solve mathematical problems/bring solutions to people/firms in exchange for hard coin.
Kind like a mathematician freelancer/mercenary : You do the job, you get the money and that's it.

I mean, there are web sites for freelancer artists/web developer/coder. But there isn't one for mathematicians.

So, the only way to make money out of maths (in france) is either to teach it or to research in an university. Either way, you are a salary man.

Man, that sucks.
What is the use for those monsters maths skills, that I patiently honed all these years if I can't even make a little cash out of it/or make more money out of it that the average teacher (that really sucks at research/high lvl maths) ?

Financial industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no one's brought this up yet--but the past decade or so, math has become super attractive in the financial industry.

Math majors from top schools are being recruited (along with other hard sciences, physics and CS) by banks, hedge funds, etc. and getting 6 figures right out of college. No kidding. The story is, about a decade or so ago, some hedge funds decided to try letting some really smart people (i.e. math majors from top schools) handle money. They did so well, they made a fortune and it turned the industry upside-down. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but it's more or less true.

Markets had a number of pricing inconsistencies, etc. in them, and these smart mathy people figured out how to take advantage of them. Lots of algorithms and computer programming found application to managing these hedge funds. To correct for these abuses, the markets had to close the gaps and inconsistencies these hedge funds were abusing.

Although a lot of the market problems have since been cleaned up, a lot of math is going into managing funds to maximize profit. There aren't as many people making millions off of just trading, but there's a lot of jobs in the financial industry for smart math people that still pay extremely well.

The financial industry learned its lesson: math is incredibly useful. This has already been obvious in industries like computer programming, where sophisticated math goes into designing algorithms. In the future, I think we'll continue to see other industries finding out how huge the benefits of math can be.