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.

[Wholeflaffer]

That makes one less migrant tech worker visa that's needed.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Peden]

While it was true it cost someone his job, it also effectively lowered the price of the subcontractors operations, which in turn, will make it cheaper for you. When will people understand that in the long run better technology is a win-win, no matter how you look at it. Yes widespread RFID will cost alot of people their jobs at supermarkets when people can just go through the exit and the price is deducted automatically from the account. These people, althought sad and with no job at first, will find other jobs and society will be better off in general.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[hal2814]

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.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[stunt_penguin]

If Pythagoras can get one guy fired, imagine what Goldman's Polytope is going to do!

/changes professions

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Vellmont]

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

That's one way to look at it. There's no denying that technology replaces some low level jobs. But on the other end the boss guy now has more money to spend on something else. He might pocket the money, or he might fire another guy and use the combined money to hire a more skilled helper. Then take on jobs that require more skill than simply staking out building sites.

If technology simply eliminated jobs without creating new ones, we'd all have been out of work a few thousand years ago.

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

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Dielectric]

I used to think like that, too. Not so much anymore. Try "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut.

There's always going to be a bottom rung of people who really can't do much more than run a cash register. What happens to them?

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[pogson]

The trailing edge of the bell curve can be accommodated by the small operations that are so small, staff cannot be cut further, the night shift, the undesirable post, and the dole/welfare/prison/social assistance.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Threni]

> When will people understand that in the long run better technology is a win-win, no matter how
> you look at it.

A `win win` in which context? Are people happier, safer, richer etc when there is more technology around them? I though technology was neutral? People in the 1950's were told that washing machines, vaccuum cleaners etc would allow housewifes/etc to get the jobs done so quickly they'd have more time for leisure, but repeated surveys of housewife's/etc show no increase in happiness.

You don't have more fun playing an xbox360 game than you did playing on a spectrum/amiga/psx1, you don't have more fun driving a modern car, or watching a new film etc. Technology is having a negative impact on the environment, jobs (wages, hours worked) etc. These are not the only result of technology, just the way it's being used. We live in an abusive social system where the minority of the worlds population controls the majority of its resources - the rest of use who are lucky enough not to live somewhere where we're likely to die from easily treatable diseases/problems like malnutrition, cholera, diarreah, malaria have to work longer and harder to take home less money to pay more for less. Technology just makes that process faster.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Vellmont]

There's always going to be a bottom rung of people who really can't do much more than run a cash register. What happens to them?

The society works hard to shrink them to a smaller and smaller percentage of the populace through education. Fify years ago I'll bet you the percentage of unskilled labor was much higher in the US than it is now.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[thetejon]

I think that's a tremendous oversimplification. How is my life better off if I can just walk out of the grocery store and everything is automatically paid for? It saves me 2-10 minutes, on average, of waiting in line. Sure, that time has value for me. But what about the half dozen cashiers that store just fired? Does my 2-10 minutes of free time outweigh their loss of income? What else are they going to do? If they had extensive, valuable skillsets, they wouldn't be working as cashiers.

You can't just make a blanket statement that "in the long run better technology is a win-win" without offering some sort of support for the statement beyond "society will be better off in general".

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[cryfreedomlove]

I don't share your sense of gloom. People today are living longer and better than 50 years ago. People below the poverty line in the USA today drive their own car, they have color TV's, and they are vaccinated. None of them are going to be crippled by polio or die from the measles.

Still, if you really think things are getting worse, let's make you King with absolute authority. What would you do to change things?

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[sammy baby]

Did I just read correctly that one of your options for people who can't find unskilled labor work is prison?

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Dinny]

People are certainly safer and richer. Safer, look at the number of work related deaths as a percentage of population from 1950 to today. Richer, compare the average portion of income spent on luxuries like eating out.

As far as happier, people have signifigantly more control over how they spend their time and what they do. People tend to settle in to a level of happiness based not on their current condition, but on what they compare it to. Find someone and compare what they would have had in the 50's to what they have now and see if what they have now makes them happy.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[cryfreedomlove]

Can you propose an answer to your cashier question? What do you think happened to lamplighters that were replaced by electric lamps? How about blacksmiths that were replaced by the automobiles?

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[saforrest]

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.

I was completely mystified about what this could possibly have meant, until I remembered that you guys don't use the metric system. :)

I guess converting from 11.764 feet to 11 feet and the appropriate number of inches would be a bitch. I'm just surprised they put the conversion into a special "square root" button and don't just have a general feet/inches decimal conversion tool.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Threni]

> People today are living longer and better than 50 years ago

People are living longer largely due to decreased infant mortality.

> Still, if you really think things are getting worse, let's make you King with absolute
> authority. What would you do to change things?

More equality of access to healthcare. Discourage the trend towards obesity by ensuring people can afford and have access to fresh fruit and vegetables every day. Encourage people to excersize. Encourage better/cheaper public transport so you don't have 1 person per car all over the planet. Ensure cycling is safe anc convenient.

That's a start, for developed countries. The main problem is in developing problems. While Mr Bush is spending billions fighting `terrorism` many, many, many more people are dying from problems like those I mentioned before. Why not take a look at the number of people dying each year from them? How much money would it take to sort that out?

If you're obsessed with using technology then there's no reason why we couldn't spend less time exploring space - just for a few years, we'll get back to it - and more time working on desalination systems, solar power capture, wave energy capture, hybrid/alternatively powered transport - stuff like that.

Really, the problems are obvious, but because it's not in your face every single day we don't think about it. If there was a part of your town that people were dying of, say, diarreah or sleeping sickness and the cure cost a few pence you wouldn't say `oh, but they're across town, that's not my problem` - you'd probably go there this weekend and help out, like what happens when there's a hurricane or earthquake. That doesn't happen when it's happening across the world, even though thanks to jet technology (a consequence of the military angle that infects all research) you could be there this time tomorrow.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[raddan]

But what happens when your educational system is barely able to keep up with the current demand for educated workers?

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[OldManAndTheC]

let's make you King with absolute authority. What would you do to change things?

Oh boy! Let's see:

• Raise the alcohol content of beer.
• Reinstate the practice of dwarf-tossing
• Get rid of the IRS. Replace it with knights in armor who go door to door and take all your stuff, and give it the King (me).
• Bring back droit du seigneur

It's good to be the King!

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[hswerdfe]

why am I better of that I can buy a bag of apples at a 2% discount?
why am I better of that I can buy this bag of apples 10% quicker then 5 years ago?

why?

perhaps I would be better of this bag of apples was grown in Ontario and shipped to me a few hundred mile, rather then the few thousand it probably was.

the ability to Consume more does not make the world a better place.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[dedave]

You clearly don't know any poor people (or grad students for that matter). $1-5/lb, indeed! Sometimes $5 is all someone has for the rest of the week. You can't just buy a pound of fruit and eat that for a week.

Ramen and ground beef that's been marked down because it's about to expire is much more in line with what people are able to stretch their budgets to.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fat people are fat for a number of reasons.

unhealthy food is cheap
unhealthy food is fashionable
unhealthy food is heavily advertised (when did you last see an ad for carrots, rice etc)
unhealthy food is available in every city,town, highstreet,corner shop, school,office

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its true that TVs are cheap and (used) cars aren't too expensive, but who cares? When it comes down to it in the U.S. there are basically three expenses you should care about:

Education (so you can earn a good living)
Housing
Medical Care

As a percentage of income these have climbed through the roof. Education and Medical Care costs have exceeded inflation for as long as I can remember. Housing has been a bear the past few years (although everyone thinks that will subside). a small 40/50 year old two-bedroom ranch house in my good-but-not-great suburb is > $350,000.

So the poor can watch TV. Great. Let them eat cake. What happens when they get sick and can't afford to go to the doctor's office? They end up in the emergency room - and we all pay.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[thesandtiger]

My food budget is approximately 150 a month. I have a decent amount of variety in my diet -

Pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, lentils, cous cous, oatmeal, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, banannas, pita, eggs, chicken, and maybe 2 times a month I'll have a steak or something similar. If I run out of spices, I skip the steak for a month and spend that on restocking the seasonings. Most importantly, there's no ramen in my house.

I make a lot of soups or long-cooking dishes - crockpot cooking is wonderful, as I can get it started in the morning and, by the time I get home, I've got a nice dinner waiting, and I can use the leftovers for lunch the next day or as a stock for my next dish.

It's pretty easy to eat a healthy diet on a very low budget if you're willing to learn to cook a little. $5 a day is plenty. I consume about 1250-1500 calories a day, and I don't get bored with the menu - I've got plenty of recipes, to where I could probably go at least a month without having the same thing twice (except for oatmeal at breakfast - I 3 the oatmeal).

Anyway - I learned to eat like this when I was in college and had to live on a food budget of a bit less than $100 a month (the mid 90's). I could certainly afford a much larger budget for food, but honestly I just don't feel the need, and I'd rather sock that extra money away for when I retire.

Completely off-topic, I know, but it annoys me when I see people talking about how low food budget means you have to eat ramen.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Fify years ago I'll bet you the percentage of unskilled labor was much higher in the US than it is now.

I have a hard time believing that ... especially in a country where the largest private employer is Wal-Mart, a country with a 60 Billion+ per month trade deficit and an economy where 75% of GDP is consumer spending. The US is nothing more than a spoiled heiress spending her inheritance.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Threni]

> People in the first world are living longer due to medical techniques and drugs that didn't
> exist years ago.

That statement is true, but misleading. It's just that so many children didn't make it until their, say, 2nd birthday that the average was massively lowered.

> 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.

Didn't you read the original question? I'm the king now - you've got to do what I say otherwise I'll cut your head off! Bicycles will be freely available a la the `white bike` scheme of Amsterdam (only I'll kill bike thieves).

> Why is it the responsibility of the developed world to square this away?

We can do it, so we have a moral responsibility to do it. The developed world spends billions of dollars on the military and entertainment, which would be far more usefully spent on preventing deaths. Why not read up on sleeping sickness in Africa, to pick just one problem.

> This sounds suspiciously like a hint at wealth redistribution.

You say it like it's a bad thing. Where does wealth come from? Natural resources, or services built using them, and largely from undeveloped countries. Why shouldn't this be spread around. You're so interested in people `earning` money/property that you're prepared to allow literally millions of people to die every year from problems which cause practically no deaths at all in developed countries just to maintain your belief in an immoral method of running countries? What percentage of the US GDP is given away each year? If you don't think it should be, why not petition for less. But if it IS the moral thing to do, then compare that with the amount spent on the military.

> Peaceful space exploration must go on for the advancement of the human race.

What's the speed of light? How long does it take at that speed to get to the nearest star? Do the maths - what's the point? Sure, it's interesting - I'm into all that, but at the moment it's not a priority. Each shuttle launch is `worth` millions of human lives. Still think it's worth it? Like I said, we'll get back to it. The universe isn't going anywhere - we're certainly not.

> The reality is that I share more cultural and economic bonds with my fellow citizens,
> therefore their well-being is more important to me.

A very weak argument. On that basis you personally wouldn't find anything immoral about the Nazi genocide of the Jews - unless they had legally binding contracts with you, at which point it would suddenly become immoral.

> You've stated some global problems with
> approximately zero feasible concrete solutions to any of them.

On the contrary, you've just come up with excuses for not making the effort to change anything.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Kevin Stevens]

I spend about $100 a month on food. How do I do it? Rice and pasta are my main staples. On average I eat one meal a day. I don't buy junk food. The processed "easy" food is almost always more expensive and almost always less healthy. Eating one or two meals a day keeps me within my target weight range. I also enjoy cooking. It is not a chore to me, kind of like when you get a piece of code to work properly, sitting down to a good meal cooked with fresh ingredients is very satisfying.

Lets break it down.
One pound of pasta costs about a dollar. This will feed me for 4 meals. Sauce to be served with the pasta costs about $3, maybe $5 for a really pricey sauce or complicated homemade recipe. $6 = 4 meals. $1.50 a meal. Throw some meat in there or a veggie to make it $2.
About 10 pounds of rice costs about $5. A cup of rice is good for about 3-4 servings, and there are about 25 cups of rice in a bag. So rice costs about 5 cents for a meal. Youre going to need some veggies and meat in there to make a decent meal, so youre total cost for a meal of rice and whatever is probably going to be $2.

So even a balanced meal costs $2. Eat one time a day and you're costs for a dinner are $60. The other $40 is accounted for by things like fruit, salads for lunch, cereal, milk, bread, drinks, and the occasional seafood or steak dinner, etc. I am also a single guy living in a small apartment and don't get to benefit from buying large quantities. One big caveat is that I don't consider going out to dinner and other entertainment type meals to be a part of my regular food bill. I also don't throw out food ever. Occasionally I will make a mistake and keep milk or tomatoes too long and have to throw them out, but that is pretty rare.

If you don't like rice and/or pasta, you will probably be shit out of luck. You will also probably be overweight, have high cholesterol, and in generally bad health. People who view starch and carbohydrates as bad just floor me. Starchy foods satisfy you a great deal more than any other types of food and hence you eat less, yet still have a low calorie density.

Never want to look at rice again? In Southeast Asian countries, rice is the main staple and served with just about everything. They seem to be fine with this.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[sammy baby]

Well, yeah, but I haven't seen it phrased so nakedly since...

Well, since this guy.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[ConceptJunkie]

Fify years ago I'll bet you the percentage of unskilled labor was much higher in the US than it is now.

I wouldn't bet that. I'd bet that the so-called "unskilled laborer" of 50 years ago was better educated than the typical burger-flipper, low-level corporate or government bureaucrat, first-teir tech support or Congressman is today.

Have you ever heard of "College education today is like high school education of 50 years ago?" Well, people have been saying that for at least 50 years and there's a lot of truth to it.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[alien_tracking_devic]

It's true. Our nation symbol is no longer the American Eagle, but Paris Hilton.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[halltk1983]

when did you last see an ad for carrots, rice etc

ermmm, every time I've been to a school?
Healthy food is cheap
healthy food is fashionable
healthy food is available in every city, town, etc,etc,
also, lets not forget the "got milk" commercials...
We've been told health food is where it is at to the point where McDONALDS carries friggin salads. Don't tell me health food is unavailable. People are fat because they are lazy, moment-oriented idiots. They don't want to excericize, they'd reather sit and watch television. Ooooh, Desperate Housewives or Survivor 12? Which one should I watch... oh I'll put on on TiVo and watch it later. Give me a friggin break people. Sure, watch DH or Survivor... but do it on a treadmill. Or a stairstepper. If you have bad knees, do sit-ups, crunches and pushups. Hell, STRETCH! Move! Don't be sedentary. That's a good start.
Don't blame your friggin problems on society. It makes me sick.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[drdewm]

I happen to be one of those people. The trick is that you need to swallow your pride and understand that you are not so bright and work that much harder to keep up with the bright bulbs the best that you can. Reguardless of what overly-hopeful people say not every one can be Michael Jordan or the president or an astronaut etc. Some of us suck and wishing and/or practice won't change that. You do your best, add whatever value that you can and try to be happy with it. Live this and life will be fruitful and more pleasant but if its not then you did your best: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,. The courage to change the things I can,. And the wisdom to know the difference

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[msouth]

How about blacksmiths that were replaced by the automobiles?

It wasn't really fair to require the poor blacksmiths to carry around the family and a trunkload of groceries anyway. I bet the blacksmiths were glad.

Re:Ancient Greek Technology Costs Jobs.

[Audacious]

Actually, fifty years ago I was born (1956). :-)

World War II saw the greatest expansion of education since....welllll World War I. It was still a boom economy in the fifties and the baby boomers were in full swing. Education was in full swing also. Many people who, as children, never had educations were getting their kids educations. Actually, not since World War II have we had so many people trying to better themselves and get an education (in the US that is). The dropout rate and educational rate of most students in today's schools is dismal compared to the 1950s. Free thinking, free love, free, free, free makes people lazy. Lazy people don't try to think and in many cases refuse to think. My wife, who teaches science, sometimes just wants to go screaming down the corridor. You teach a kid something, ask them to repeat it, and many times they either can't or won't. Last year 80% of her class graduated, this year (she got moved to 8th grade from 6th grade) only 60% of the student are passing. Of those, only 30% may make it to the end of the semester. Compare this to the 90% graduation rates of the fifties and I think you will see that although there are more people around now than before - fewer of them are graduating or even making it through school.

Now, granted, my wife is teaching in a mainly hispanic school who got a large influx of kids from Louisiana after the hurricane. Many of the kids can barely talk English, there is a high dropout rate because the families move a lot, and they have a higher percentage of kids who's parents get divorced or just one of them walks out on the other. But her school is not out of line with others where other ethnic majorities reside.

For instance, the Sharpstown school in Houston, Texas last year had a huge scandal because they falsely stated that only 5% of the kids were dropping out of school. Then it was found out that the principal and others had cooked the books and that really about 25% of the kids had dropped out of that school. The Sharpstown school is predominately white so any social bias would not apply.

So the problem isn't who you are teaching but that kids today seem to be less motivated to go to school than ever before. I can't blame them either. With all of the things the government has done and is doing about all these kids can look forwards to are scum jobs. As with Charles Dickenson's book "A Tale of Two Cities", we are becoming a country of the haves and have nots even though we already know what happens when that situation occurs. This isn't to say that there aren't people out there trying to change things. But it is to say that there are a heck of a lot more people in need than we have people to fix the problem (or even money to fix the problem).

So no. There are more people alive today than there were back in the 50s and there are more people out of work, looking for jobs, and not having the proper skills to achieve their goals today than in the 50s. Consequently, there are more people today and fewer in yesteryear who are uneducated and unskilled.

. . .

To show what I mean:

My father's father was an unskilled worker until World War I. During World War I he received an education while in the military. My father was born just after the end of World War I. His family lived in a tiny town which didn't even have running water and was near a swamp. Where exactly I won't say. His dad taught him how to hunt so he could help bring home food when he was old enough. My father went to school up to 10th grade. (Which, I think, was the highest grade at the time.) When World War II came along, he enlisted, fought, came home, and then went to college while still in the armed forces. He married my mom who had also gone to school. Both parents went through the Great Depression. My mom's family moved all the way from the northwest to the southeast where, when she was older, she met my father. No matter where we moved to - we went to school. Being military kids, our f

Hmmmm

[antifoidulus]

I wonder if this Neal Goldman was in the AV club during high school and had a crush on a girl named Meg.

The Pure Profession

[eldavojohn]

How has mathematics, statistics and other number driven aspects of life impacted you in the last decade?

Wow, a better question would be, "What part of my life hasn't been impacted by math?"

I've always liked math. And, in the past decade, there has been much evidence pointing toward math being a primary component in a better lifestyle. It didn't fully hit me until I was a freshman in college and my computer science courses started crossing paths with my linear algebra courses.

But even in grade school, there was evidence that those in control of mathematics sat a bit higher on the food chain. For instance, I got into an argument with my dad (an independent concrete pourer) when I was in eighth grade. He wanted to build a base for a grain silo and needed to know how many cubic yards of cement was needed. So he was having a hard time computing this. I told him it was (as we all know) pi*radius^2. After much debate, I gave him a piece of graph paper and a compass and told him to draw it and estimate the number of squares. I don't look down on my dad, he just never had an education like I was privileged to have.

And so I slowly started to realize that mathematics were the underlying principle to everything. Maybe you've seen the motion picture Pi and remember the part where the main character has a revelation that everything can be described by math. In my opinion, he was dead right.

The key to math is that the application of it is far more useful than the raw theory of it. That's why the actual profession of mathematician is rarely sought after, instead, the ideal situation is one who has a firm background in math due to classes or a minor.

After taking a statistics course, I realized that math helps us predict the future based on prior events. What is more useful to a human being than to be able to predict what is going to happen? As H.G. Wells might tell you, not much.

This article was well written as it pointed out the good and bad aspects of the power of mathematics. The funny thing about math is that it's neither good nor evil until it's applied.

Re:The Pure Profession

[Keck]

And so I slowly started to realize that mathematics were the underlying principle to everything. Maybe you've seen the motion picture Pi and remember the part where the main character has a revelation that everything can be described by math. In my opinion, he was dead right.

I'm a math/sci geek too (do you have to SAY that on /.?) but I want to point out that we are well served to be aware of the limitations of math and logic. Some people put as much faith in logic and our own mathematical knowlege as any fundamentalist zealot puts in their own religion. Reasonable people (and the smartest mathematicians and scientists I've ever seen) realize that math and even logic are human's own inventions, and are limited in what they can be applied to. That said, they are a hugely useful system of describing the natural world and even abstract ideas in a very communicable way -- we've often heard and said that Math is the true international language. Yet, there are statements in math that we know we can neither prove nor disprove -- and conversely, there are things we know to be true (by experience, which Einstein referred to as the ultimate truth) but we know for sure can't be proven!

Google for "Gödel's theorem", or maybe "metamathematics" before knee-jerk replying, please.

Re:The Pure Profession

[RalphLeon]

You know it always amazes me that when anyone talks about math they start talking statistics and calculations. This is not pure mathematics. Statistics is its own breed and calculations are for the engineers, pure mathematics is about abstractions of formal logic.

Now if we wanted to start talking about ring theory, field theory, galois theory, real analysis, topology, etc. these are examples of the pure mathematical concepts. Not number crunching. All of these other things like "statistics" and "applied math" are great things but I feel that they are certainly not pure.

Re:The Pure Profession

[RalphLeon]

there are statements in math that we know we can neither prove nor disprove

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

Re:The Pure Profession

[period3]

Reasonable people (and the smartest mathematicians and scientists I've ever seen) realize that math and even logic are human's own inventions

...and there are other reasonable people who believe that math is a universal truth discovered by humans, not "invented" by them.

Re:The Pure Profession

[tjhayes]

He wanted to build a base for a grain silo and needed to know how many cubic yards of cement was needed. So he was having a hard time computing this. I told him it was (as we all know) pi*radius^2

Your dad needed a VOLUME measurement, and you calculated it with an AREA measurement. Maybe you are not as good as math as you think you are!

Re:The Pure Profession

[Vadim Grinshpun]

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 :)

Re:The Pure Profession

[pythorlh]

Actually, Godel went even one step farther. He proved that there are statements that can produce a completely consistent logic, whether you chose to make them axiomatic, or to make their inverse axiomatic. Thus, these statements are not only logically true, but also logically false (in a sense).

Non-Euclidean geometry was the first evidence of this fact. The axiom was that any point can have only a single line that passes through it parallel to another given line. Euclid took this as an axiom, and went on to define planar geometry. The non-Euclidean geometries of curved spaces came about by taking it as an axiom that the statement is false.

English skills?

[tehshen]

"We'll have systems that tap our knowledge by the minute," [Pierre Haren] says. "Productivity could rise by a factor of 10."

That's nice, but which factor? 1 is a factor of 10 :)

Calculator

[genbitter]

I guess I better replace the batteries in my calculator.

Re:Math vs Maths?

[smittyoneeach]

Mathematics - ematic = Maths

well lets just say

[scenestar]

How has mathematics, statistics and other number driven aspects of life impacted you in the last decade?

It hasn't gotten me laid yet.

Re:well lets just say

[massivefoot]

Perhaps you should integrate more.

Re:well lets just say

[ezpei]

There are at least two ways math can get you laid.

1) If you're an applied math guy, you can use it to make enough money to attract the kind of women who like money
2) If you're a theoretical math guy, you can use it to make interesting small talk involving some loose homomorphism between something you know a lot about and one of the woman's interests, assuming she's smart enough to follow what you're saying

Option (2) works particularly well with hippie chicks, artists, and architects. Fortunately, my wife is and/or was all three of those things ;)

Re:well lets just say

[pjy]

The staff at /\/\cDonalds get confused when I ask for a dozen chicken nuggets. They only sell them in lots of 3,6 or 9.

Be pushed around

[PietjeJantje]

They always advertise it as a field, and sure it's interesting, but as a job, to be a mathematician you're typically in a position where you are a tool for the non-mathematician's. Of course the non-math's want more math's to do the work for them and tell them what to do... but is it a good carreer?

Re:Be pushed around

[systmoadownfreak]

Honestly I do think that it would be a good career. I know that while I've always been more oriented toward the social studies/english aspect of school, the maths/sciences are something that hold great importance to advancing our technology as a whole. This is one of the main reasons that Japan has excelled in recent years. Their educational system is very effective in teaching the subjects related to math. In the US however, it seems that we go for every new educational fad that comes out. We spend so many of our resources on trying to promote the new political agendas to students that a lot of the focus is lost.

On the subject of mathmeticians always being told what to do by other people, well a lot of careers are like that. Doctors and lawyers both have to do as their clients want. Mathmaticians are a large part of ensuring accurate information without forcing other resources to be used on performing such calculations.

The way that I see it, I don't think that it would be such a bad job to have. Nor do I just think that it's a job where all you do is other people's dirty work.

Re:Be pushed around

[elstumpo]

Yes, it is a great career. I have been a corporate mathematician doing various things like the article talks about, for the last 10 years. My job is always interesting enough to make me want to go. Not too many other people can do my job, so I have security. And, there's sufficient demand for my services that if my employer upsets me, I can go elsewhere. And it pays a lot. The whole point of my jobs is that I am expected to be provably correct, and that my suggestions will be followed without much room for debate. The problems only come when people feel threatened, and there is politics and so forth. But if the organization is capable of acting in its best interests, that is exactly what the mathematician is figuring out. S/he says "this is the path of our best interest. I can prove it." Eventually, the business has to do what we say, or go out of business.

To the extent that we're often modeling something, there's wiggle room in the models. Models could be built well or poorly. And the above paragraph is only true if you do a sufficiently good job modeling.

The main impact on me

[Snamh Da Ean]

How has mathematics, statistics and other number driven aspects of life impacted you in the last decade?

It made me go made hairline recede like crazy as I studied calculus in school and at college.

Computational Linguistics

[Vann_v2]

The technique in this article is actually used, too, and can be used on different levels. That is, the BW article says this company uses it to measure the distance between two articles, but you can use it to compare the distance between two words. Here's how.

Let's say you have some corpus with N distinct words in it. For each word w you create a "context vector" vw of length 2N. In the first N positions there are counts for the number of time each word in the corpus appears immediately to the left of the word w, and for the second N positions there are counts of the same for the right context. The angle between any two vectors in this 2N-dimensional vector space produces a measure of the distance between the two words. If you use some kind of dimensionality reduction technique to get a 2-dimensional representation, you can see that although this technique is pretty crude linguistically speaking it does pretty well. Each language has a distinct "shape" in this regard, with similar words grouped together, i.e., in English there might be a cluster of points consisting of "singular nouns," or specific parts of speech, like prepositions. It can sometimes even group words by semantic domain, depending on your corpus.

Remember kids, computational linguistics is fun!

Re:Computational Linguistics

[19061969]

Are you discussing latent semantic analysis by any chance? ;^)

It performs well in certain areas (for example, completing certain MCQ's to the same level as humans), automatic essay marking (but read the Powers et al study for more), and other things. It's surprising how well it does despite there being a complete absence of grounding (grounding in artificial intelligence terms).

Re:Computational Linguistics

[gol]

already been done, many years ago
this guy presents nothing new. there are a host of such vector-space techniques, such as Latent Sematnic Analaysis, which all depend on this crucial reduction of dimensions to collapse similar vectors in such a way that they move closer to each other. article here. Not a great article to be honest, but I can't be bothered to edit it.

How much more?

[republican gourd]

Article is missing the most important part....

is it 2x more? 3x more? Maybe 5(log n)x^2 more? sin(cos(log (pi) * -1/2)) + e? More importantly, how much has the standard deviation moved from previous years to this one?

Statistics are essential

[Sockatume]

My outlook on the everyday world (especially marketing and the media) has changed immensely since I started getting Stats lectures in my second year at Uni. H. G. Wells was right:

Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read or write

It's just unfortunate that so few people do have an understanding of statistics. I've lost count of the newspaper stories, even years-long media-fuelled "controversies"-, which are based entirely on misunderstood, misrepresented, or malformed statistics. "How to Lie with Statistics" should be required reading in high school.

Another application for math

[jimand]

statistics, advertising, search engines, and algorithms.

and Texas Hold'em.

Is this news?

[GenieGenieGenie]

...the rise of maths and mathematicians in a world that is increasingly obsessed with statistics, advertising, search engines, and algorithms

This is news only in the retarded world of business. I think we in the natural sciences have capished this quite a while ago.

From TFA:

This has happened before. In past decades, the marriage of higher math and computer modeling transformed science and engineering.

Excluded middle

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be just me, but it seems that lots of the traditional computer science curriculum has changed. I remember there being some calculus and statistics with calc requirements. Recently I looked at some school catalogs and was surprised to see that the math requirements for a computer science degree had changed substantially to the point that calc II or III was no longer needed. If the article is true then we're in for a real shortage of programmers who understand the mathematics.

At the same time I'm seeing mathematics positions than seemingly didn't exist before. The odd thing is that they were primarily math positions with some computer language requirements instead of the reverse. Instead of some actuarial positions, there are openings in software houses, animation studios, civil sector, etc..

Guess geeks will have their time in the spotlight again soon. Yay for me.

KLL

Re:Excluded middle

[aetherspoon]

That tends to happen when CS gets taught by engineering departments rather than mathematics departments. Originally, all CS departments were an extension of the mathematics departments. Later on, most shifted towards engineering. Of those that shifted to engineering, the CS fields are taught more from an engineering point of view (design/build your code and produce the product) rather than a mathematics/science point of view (learn of the theories of your code, think about how to design some abstract concept instead of a final product). In the former point of view, mathematics ends up being skimmed over more than the latter.

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.

(Disclaimer: I'm a CS/Math major)

Re:Excluded middle

[StandardDeviant]

Originally, all CS departments were an extension of the mathematics departments.

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.

Re:Excluded middle

[Coryoth]

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.

Re:Excluded middle

[GileadGreene]

Engineering is applied mathematics after all.

No, it really isn't. Engineering is fundamentally a pragmatic approach to producing things that are "fit for purpose" (or, more generally, an approach to solving problems). Now, part of that pragmatism is the realization that applying knowledge from the sciences and from mathematics during the design process makes it much more likely that the resulting product will actually function that way it is intended to. Hence the importance of mathematics in the eductaion of engineers. But math (and science) is only one tool in the engineer's toolkit. Some things simply aren't (yet) understood well enough in a scientific or mathematical context to provide useful predictions of behavior. So engineers also use a lot of other tools to get their job done. These tools include empirical (but not necessarily scientific) experience, intuition, reuse of existing designs, and plain old trial and error.

Please note that this comment isn't intended to denigrate the importance of mathematics to engineering. In fact, I personally believe that the application of mathematics is quite neglected in some areas of engineering (especially software engineering). But the successful application of mathematics in engineering is unlikely if we don't properly understand the place of mathematics within the larger practice of engineering.

That's EASY..

[Young Master Ploppy]

"How has mathematics, statistics and other number driven aspects of life impacted you in the last decade?"

Stopped me getting laid for most of it.

Next question...?

Re:Math vs Maths?

[el_womble]

Because when you shorten a word you carry the plural, otherwise you change the meaning. The parallels between Maths and English in this particular situation are almost ironic.

Perceptions of maths

[massivefoot]

It's true that mathematics is very much in demand, but unfortunately in the UK that hasn't translated into a greater interest in mathematics. I don't know how things are abroad, but here it's considered shameful to be illiterate, but almost embarrassing to be numerate.

I'm currently at uni studying maths, and a huge number of the people on my course are from overseas. Is it only the UK which seems to suffer from some sort of violent social allergy to mathematical competence?

Re:Perceptions of maths

[BenjyD]

I always find it odd that in intelligent UK middle-class society it is assumed people know some literature, geography, history, politics and classical music, all relatively complex areas, but even the simplest mathematical or technical ideas are unknown.

Why math is the greatest of all subjects

[nandu_prahlad]

Math is truly the most awsome among all subjects. Learning it offers you the kind of freedom that is unmatched by learning any other subject. Have you noticed how a mathematician can switch easily between multiple areas of study? That's cuz one can apply math to almost every field imaginable from Language (Computational Linguistics) to Biology (Computational Biology). I don't mean to dismiss learning other subjects (it's important to be well rounded) but can any other subject gift you you with such amazing flexibility?

There's beauty and elegance in a mathematical result which will always remain true forever. School kids even today, study about the Pythogoras theorem - a mathematical result that was established more than 2 thousand years ago. You're learning Calculus that was discovered by Newton & Liebniz several hundred years ago. Compare this with other fields like Management where the MBA syllabus keeps changing as newer management techniques and new buzzwords/MBA jargon are invented.

Again, I don't mean to dis MBA dudes. It's just that in an fast paced information age where paradigms are constantly being challenged and new ones being invented, it is reassuring to have a body of knowledge that you can always depend on no matter what.

Seriously! You don't have to be good at math (I'm just a lowly Master's and that too in CS :)) to appreciate the beauty and elegance of this amazing subject.

Math is hurt in the USA by its negative image

[192939495969798999]

I can't imagine how many more kids would learn math and be good at it if it weren't for the whole "math is hard and dumb" attitude of the general public in the USA. I don't think kids go into math thinking it's all that hard, but teachers even tell them it is. When that kid goes home, his parents tell him it is. The media makes math "stupid" and even in cartoons, portrays people that are good at it as social outcasts. How is this helping us in any way? I think the best advance that Math could take is to achieve a positive image in society. If that happened, then its advancements in science could only increase faster.

Re:Math is hurt in the USA by its negative image

[MobyDisk]

Too many teachers don't teach applied mathematics, so math becomes boring and hard. Every single forumla you learn from Algebra I to Multivariable calculus and beyond can be used to solve a problem in the very room the student sits. Teachers need to show the students how to calculate the position of satellites, the amount of power flowing into the room, how far they can throw a ball, or how hard I could bury my fist into the jerk sitting next to me.

As a programmer, I found that I was using maths beyond my grade level and didn't even know it. But my teachers weren't supportive of my applied uses of math. They actually scorned me for using a computer to solve problems. It was only "learning" if I did all the work by hand. They missed whole the point of education.

Re:Math is hurt in the USA by its negative image

[dkleinsc]

As far as I can tell there are 3 major sources of math anxiety:
1. Parents who don't know math, and thus can't teach mathematical concepts to their kids beyond counting.
2. Elementary school teachers who deemphasize math in favor of reading and 'riting.
3. Popular culture.

The first cause is really only solveable if you solve the other 2 causes, because you need a generation of mathematically literate parents.

If you look at the people who are doing elementary school teaching, their primary focus tends to be teaching reading, handwriting, neatness, respect for authority, etc. Arithmetic tends to be taught more as rules to memorize than as ideas to understand (for instance memorizing that 3+4=7 rather than taking 3 things, taking 4 more things, and counting how many you have when you're done), leaving students with very little connection between math and reality.

Popular culture contributes as well. For instance, it creates an image of math as the province of strange or crazy people who work with ideas us peons can only dream of understanding. Even places where math comes into play, such as sports statistics, business news, government budgets, etc there's a big effort to avoid making the math understandable.

Re:Math is hurt in the USA by its negative image

[Coryoth]

Too many teachers don't teach applied mathematics, so math becomes boring and hard. Every single forumla you learn from Algebra I to Multivariable calculus and beyond can be used to solve a problem in the very room the student sits.

You know I would say that too many teachers don't teach pure mathematics, so the joy of exploration and discovery and logical thought is lost. Mathematics becomes rote mechanical rules that you unthinkingly chug through to produce some number which is supposed to be important. There is no questioning of why those rules are what they are, why the methods work, and what the structure actually is. The focus is on teaching kids the applications of math and they never get to understand how to think about math, how to think logically, how to explore the structure of our own mental creations. Mathematics is taught with absolutely no sense of wonder, or curiousity.

Teaching kids how to apply mathematics is important, but really not that hard. Teaching kids to see math as something other than a whole list of rules and methods and mechanical applications of formulas - now that takes some real effort. That, however, is what pure mathemathatics can get you.

Jedidiah.

Re:Math is hurt in the USA by its negative image

[SeanAhern]

Amen, brother.

A deficiency in mathematics skills is "innumeracy," a counterpart to "illiteracy." The scary part is that people nurture innumeracy as if it were a thing to be proud of. Imagine if people took innumeracy as seriously as they did illiteracy. The literacy rate is well trumpeted as a measure of a society's success. Imagine if the numeracy rate were as widely reported and remarked upon.

Re:Math is hurt in the USA by its negative image

[MobyDisk]

Well, I guess maybe the problem was just me. Let me tell you something about myself. Maybe you can help:

In high school, when I was at home and bored, I wrote code to get objects to move around in 3D space on the screen. I figured out how to make smooth curves with cubic equations. I toyed with fractals because they looked cool. I made eclectic music by playing with trig functions.

The same year I was writing 3D transforms I was sent back a grade from trig back to algebra because I couldn't keep up. The teacher thought I was wasting my time on these programs until I had a solid foundation. To this day I want to go back and kick her ass. Despite years writing 3D games I barely squeaked though linear algebra in college. If only somebody had explained to me that those equations I used were based on 3x3 and 4x4 matrix multiplications I might have done better. Maybe I wouldn't have failed Calc if someone pointed out that the smooth curve functions that I wrote were based on the principle of keeping the derivitive of the curve continuous.

This is why I want applied math. All my life I solved math problems, learned new math myself, and applied it. All while my teachers couldn't even connect what I was doing to the theory they taught.

Call it applied math. Call it pure math. Whatever. Here's my request: Just don't let another student go through what I did.

Humans create, Computers execute

[digitaldc]

Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater. - Albert Einstein

I have learned that you can do wonderful and amazing things with machines and math, but machines themselves will never reproduce the creativity, insight, and wonder of the human mind.

Laying Tile

[IAAP]

The 3-4-5 rule for getting the grout lines square to the reference wall. Measure 3' along the outside wall, mark a small line 4' perpendicalur to that line, then from the end of the 3' measure 5' until it intersects with the 4' mark. Now you have a right angle for laying out you tile.

It's funny, but I've used more math (especially geometry) doing home improvement projects than I ever did programming computers. Granted, I've never did any intense graphics programming, but a little bit of UI type of stuff.

Math can be useful like for this FoxTrot cartoon!

[antdude]

View FoxTrot cartoon and figure out its Easter Egg. I suck at math, but at least I knew it was binary and had to decode it. You can view AQFL for the analysis and answer. :)

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) ?

Re:Making money as a freelancer mathematician

[Valafar]

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...

Re:Making money as a freelancer mathematician

[fliptout]

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. :)

Re:Making money as a freelancer mathematician

[akuma(x86)]

Go to Wall Street.

They have tremendous demand for mathematicians that can develop models to quantify risk.

This is not a trivial problem. It is quite technically challenging and requires very sophisticated mathematical skills. Oh, and you'll make more money than God.

Re:Math can be useful like for this FoxTrot cartoo

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

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'

Where?

[weierstrass]

>Instead of some actuarial positions, there are openings in software houses, animation studios, civil sector, etc..

i am a final year mathematics student whose dream isn't to work as an actuary or for a merchant bank. if anyone has advice on interesting fields where mathematicians are required rather than tolerated, i would appreciate it. or in general, advice on where to look.

i have studied almost exclusively pure maths, mainly analysis and number theory with some algebra and computational stuff, and can program C, some Fortran and some C++.

Too late

[liangzai]

When I tell a potential employer I know Galois theory, he stares at me for a few seconds, and then asks me "Do you know how to use Excel?". To which I reply that I prefer Mathemathica and rarely touch Microsoft products. Then the interview is over.

When I tell a girl I admire her Riemannesque topology and say her virtues are greater in number than those of the girls of Lesbos combined and raised to the googoolth power, she says: "Dude, you are such a sweetie, but I have to go now".

When I tell my neighbor he can make his wine cellar temperature independent by putting it y meters below the ground, he says "Well, aren't you a smarty, boy!", grins, and then returns home to put on the missis.

Re:Too late

[radtea]

When I tell a potential employer I know Galois theory, he stares at me for a few seconds, and then asks me "Do you know how to use Excel?". To which I reply that I prefer Mathemathica and rarely touch Microsoft products. Then the interview is over.

This is absolutely accurate. Most people working in technology are a) not very smart and b) have incredibly fragile egos. Not so different from most people in general, in fact. This makes life hard for anyone with actual skills.

I know not a few "data analysts" with Ph.D.s who use Excel, and get all touchy if you suggest there are more appropriate tools for the job. Octave/Matlab is considered "advanced" and no one touches Mathematica, still less things like Perl (which is surprisingly fast--I once used an R-K solver in Perl that ran almost as fast as my first naive C++ implementation.)

The fact is that math is way too powerful to make much of a living at. Most technology problems require a tiny amount of math and a lot of engineering. Most people are either too stupid to see the value of the math or are threatened by the power of something they don't understand, so they adopt various heuristics that lower their productivity, as we've seen discussed in the thread on construction workers.

Re:Too late

[try_anything]

Wow, I never thought of using my math skills as a social chastity belt. I find that waving my arms and yelling "booga booga!" works pretty well, but it sometimes attracts unwanted attention. Next time I'll try functional analysis instead. Thanks for the idea!

Learning in general is taking a hit

[Shivetya]

When you have so many news stories about anti-competitve rules being put in place in public schools it gets depressing. From schools where getting the responses to questions right isn't as important as understanding who you are. Where schools that don't require you to graduate to get handed a diploma to ones where you have multiple class valedictorians. To read about stories that students put a stigma on success in school because its too much being like "the other race" or such non-sense. Where teacher unions are more to protect themselves than promote the education of children to school boards where the administrative salaries outweigh those of the teachers.

Education in this country needs a serious reform. The primary focus should be making our children the brightest and best in the world. If this means putting public schools into competition with private schools for taxpayer dollars then do it, its done in parts of Europe to this day! Instead we have a system which is run by people only concerned about their welfare and shoving their correctness down societies throat. The schools are not used to educate but to condition. When steps are taken to hold them accountable they run to the courts scream racism, fairness, and about religion. The people teaching our children should never have become second to the people who oversee them just as the children should never have become second to those who teach them.

First and formost disruptive students should not be allowed to force the system to adjust to them.
Next teachers who cannot meet the requirements should not have the "right" to stay simply because of tenure and union muscle
Schools should not have an absolute right to taxpayer money.
Public, private schools, and even home schooling should all be held to the same standards. (currently some areas pass laws that are more strict on anyone but the public school!)
Students who do excell need to be encouraged, not dragged down by anti-competitive practices
Religon should be the domain of private or home schooling. However its existance there should not be grounds for withholding funding. The standards for funding should not even hint about requiring or disallowing religon. (again, all schooling should have the same neutral standards)
Testing must be mandatory at all grades. This allows for quicker identification of students who need more help and systems than need changing.

Its been far to long that people just send their kids off to "public daycare". We do a disservice to our children and society as a whole by not pushing for the best we can have. Throwing money at the problem will not work and has proven so. We must also set levels of achievement that all sides can understand.

Re:Learning in general is taking a hit

[Rakishi]

They tried fixing education (specifically regarding gifted students) in the 80s, they got a half assed solution in place (in numerous states) before the media got bored and people stopped caring.

Education in this country needs a serious reform. The primary focus should be making our children the brightest and best in the world.

Schools aren't the problem, it is society. Parents don't give a damn too often or think their kids are a gift from god and can never do wrong. There is little societal push for education, look at Asians and how much their whole society pushes for education.

Part of the problem is that we have it too good, no desire or perceived need for education in too much of the population.

Next teachers who cannot meet the requirements should not have the "right" to stay simply because of tenure and union muscle

Sadly some areas are lacking teachers period, throw out the bad ones and no one is left to teach the kids.

Testing must be mandatory at all grades. This allows for quicker identification of students who need more help and systems than need changing.

Ah, yes the reason half the schools don't teach anything useful anymore. Any sort of standardized test creates the following problem: the test is the only thing that matters, the test's structure is pre-known, teaching for the test and only the test is the most efficient use of time.

I'm sure in the long term it could lead to some fun systems: kid gets 99% on test in grade x but is bored, he is expected to get a 80% on the test in grade x+1, most efficient method: keep the kid in grade x so he pulls the average up.

Also, current standardized tests are a joke for anyone with any intelligence and they will always be so since lowering standards keeps the bottom 50% from being indefinitely held back. I mean, it took me a whole 2 weeks (of mostly not studying) to learn the physics that NY State regards as sufficient for a High School diploma.

Math vs. UFO's and Witchcraft

[KevinGlenRoyGreer]

While browsing the stacks at my local library I came upon the mathematics section. It only contained about five or six books: two grade four or five textbooks and a couple books on math puzzles. I found this very disappointing given the importance of mathematics in so many fields, but then, to make things even worse, I happened to notice that the nearby sections on U.F.O's and Witchcraft were actually far better stocked. It made me wonder if this was caused by society's indifference towards mathematics or if it was merely caused by the liberal arts bias of most librarians.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The Pure Profession -- Still is.

[igrigorik]

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?

Re:Math vs Maths?

[gihan_ripper]

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

1911 W. OWEN Let. 14 Sept. (1967) 81 The Answers to Maths. Ques. were given us all this morning.

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.

Ho! Ho! Ho! That's what they said in the 90's

[another_drone]

I have heard this before. When I was working on a math PhD in the 90's they said the same thing. But then, it was Wall Street calling.

Know math... Yes... But as a platform to an applied field where you will stand tall with a strong math background.

Otherwise, get ready for low pay unless you graduated from MIT, NYU , or Cal Tech in a program designed specifically for the "latest" applied math craze. I watched graduates from a top 10 Applied Math Program grovel for 1 year post-docs. Many went into Comp Sci AFTER receiving their PhD because they did not want to enjoy the bountiful $35K they would get as a post-doc.

By the time a place like Business Week has an article on this, the top math programs located nearby the trend (Read that Boston, NY or Silicon Valley) already have a specialized sub-degree for the trend.

Also, be aware that PhD's tend to prefer hiring students from their adviser or their academic friends. Also a limiting factor for getting a job offer as these high end applied research jobs.

Yep, stick with your applied field and a strong math background.

Not "win-win" *unless*...

[rmcd]

This is a widely-cited and often misquoted (and misunderstood) theorem in economics. "Win-win" in this situation requires that the winners compensate the losers. If you don't pay compensation for the loss (e.g., the salary they would have earned), then you have a winner and a loser, period. You have no way to say that one's gain offsets the other's pain.

The economic theorem says that the monetary gain for the winners is great enough that it is *possible* for the winners to compensate the losers so to leave as well off as before. In this case everyone is at least as well off. But if you don't compensate the losers, you can't say a thing.

Unprovable Statements

[pinka]

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 :)

In fact, much work has been done in the last few decades in the model-theory literature. It used to be believed that Goedel like unprovable, unfalsifiable statements were somehow unnatural and would never surface in "ordinary" mathematics. After all, except for theoretical computer science classes, where does the halting problem show up in ordinary computer science? Then came the Paris Harrington theorem, a result from generalized ramsey theory which was proved to be unprovable in peano arithmetic. Since then other natural unprovable results have been found as well.

Re:The reason

[symbolic]

Back when computers were first put into use, their primary function was highly math-intensive - in fact, that's about all they did. I'd argue that much of what computers do today have little to do with math- much of the effort is focused on "e"-izing procedures that were formerly manual, or that require restructuring to accommodate a changing bsuiness climate. To be sure, there are still specialized pockets that rely on heavy math (like weather forecasting, statistical analysis, graphics, etc), but a degree in math certianly isn't a requirement in order to write a halfway decent business-related web app.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA

[eepok]

I think you over-estimate the quality of life at the poverty line and all the problems that go along with it. The sense that you give is that people who live under the line have all the amenities everyone else has, but only to a lower quality.

Let me help you out here. I lived with a family of 6 whose yearly average of taxable income of $14,000 (c.2000). We received welfare ($600/month), food stamps ($250/month), and received subsidized rent via HUD ($-400/month). As you can tell, we were below the poverty line.

Now consider the average education level of those under the line. I think my family was a good example having a Vietnam-vet with a GED as a father and a middle-school-educated mother. They were not capable of finding significant income in an area that would allow "people like us" to live.

They eventually got a car-- an '80s junker on a 16% interest loan. We had 2 color televisions with cable. "Why?," you ask? because there is literally NO OTHER WAY OF ESCAPE in a society that focuses around entertainment! A one-time cost of $200 and a monthly cost of $25 is damn reasonable when you consider that most Slashdotters rarely think more than twice about upgrading their system (or buying a new one) with a pricetag of 200+.

Lastly, there's all the qualitative differences in a family that lives below the poverty line. There's frustration (an extreme understatement here) of being stuck and unable to provide. This anger is, more often than not, expressed physically with women and children on the receiving end. There's depression, lack of confidence, in ability to socialize outside of your born-in group as other groups cost money to associate with, no culture of education... there is no hope.

So, before you rain judgement from upon high based on severly miscalculated eyeball-assumptions, give it a shot.

--Ps. The polio thing made me laugh. If you're poor and living in California, you have a limited number of times you can see a physician, emergency room, dentist, or an optometrist in a year. When I was in high school ('96-'00) we had 6 stickers on our Medical tickets. 1) Glasses, 2) Fillings, 3) busted thumb in PE, 4,5,6) Tonsilitis. After that, and with a 104-fever, I was SOL.

Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA

[MyNymWasTaken]

We had 2 color televisions with cable. "Why?," you ask? because there is literally NO OTHER WAY OF ESCAPE in a society that focuses around entertainment!

I call utter BS!

They're called libraries. You walk in, get a library card and walk out with a book *AT NO ADDITIONAL COST TO YOU*. After you've finished that book, return it and get another one - *still free*! Nowadays, there are almost always free internet connections available as well.

Don't give me that crap about "You just don't know what it's like." I used to have to take my showers, so I could look presentable at menial labor job interviews, at the local campground because I couldn't afford to pay the water bill - much less the cable TV bill.

Stop blaming society for not holding your hand through *every* point in your "oh, woe is me - I'm so pathetic" life.

Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA

[Frenchy_2001]

I lived with a family of 6 whose yearly average of taxable income of $14,000 (c.2000).[...]We had 2 color televisions with cable.[...] A one-time cost of $200 and a monthly cost of $25 is damn reasonable[...]

So, let me get this straight. You are with a ploor family, desperate for money, below the poverty line and getting helped by the state BUT they blow 20% of their income on cable? Did they also eat out at McDo regularly and buy cigarettes? Because for entertainment value, it does not get any better either.

However, i have new for you: Entertainment does not further anything. It does not allow you to grow, get better and get out of a bad situation. It is just a legal drug that helps you forget your trouble. Troubles dont go away by themselves, you need to face them to solve them, so staying in front of a TV wont solve anything. Neither will bitching or posting on /.

I know people that started with nothing (kicked out of their family home at 16 after being beaten by their dad), but they are successful today. How? They made their choice, got loans and credits, got an education and worked it out. Worked to pay their tuitions and boards, worked in class to succeed and worked and innovated to pay their bills. They could do it, but of course, it was a LOT more difficult than sitting on their butts watching TV and saying how desperate they were.

Life does not always deal you a fair situation and some needs to make more efforts to reach a given point, but USA is a land of opportunities. You can get an education and a job, but it will need LOTS of efforts if you dont get any help (family mostly).

Hope is how you look at things, not what is passed down to you. Every problem has a solution. Some required ungodly efforts to reach it...

(now, let's start the karma bashing...)

Math has always been a necessity

[cnerd2025]

The simple fact is that only a small percentage of the population has the requisite knowledge of mathematics, and only a small percentage of them have the passion and drive to pursue math even further. I am one of those mathephiles, and I'm proud of it. The problem with the article is that non-mathletes don't necessarily understand mathletes. It raises privacy problems and such as problems in the mathematical world, but the real fact is, math really does nothing to avert privacy. Maty can be used to devise algorithms which may or may not undermine privacy. The real fact is, however, that overzealous entrepreneurs will attempt to bastardize the good applications of math for their own ill gain. I don't really see a problem with the mathematical progress we make. I personally think that if businesses use math, and consumers are too stupid to realize they are being pimped, for lack of a better term, by industry, then they deserve what they get. I will still be an alert person and protect my privacy by being careful. There is no substitute for common-sense.

The other problem I have is that we need to lure women and "ethnic minorities" into mathematics. Sure, it would be wonderful if there were more female mathematicians. But we can't simply set up a quota system for mathematicians. This is more of a society problem than education or anything. Big entertainment has put out this message that being intelligent is "uncool," especially when one is good at math. In fact, society scorns illiterates, but people brag about inneptities in mathematics. Look at the news media. They are preaching about this avian flu, but their already fragile case for hysteria is flattened by their fouled up statistics (no pun intended). They say the mortality rate is something like 75%. With a logistic growth model, that would knock off huge amounts of the population in its second stage, which has definitely not happened yet. But if you look at the sources of their statistics, they only accounted for people who have been confirmed with avian flu, and specifically those who died or were critically ill. The actual numbers of people who have been infected is probably much higher, and in past years many people have probably been affected by it and then overcame it, thinking it was a "normal" flu. With these people taken into account, the true mortality rate is probably much less. The lack of math knowledge in the media is terrible, because these people just utter words that they think they understand. "Mortality rate" is the ratio of deaths (with respect to something) per 1000 people. If you looked up infant mortality rate, it would be quoted as "n deaths per 1000 live births". When society en masse becomes more attentive to mathematics, then we will start to see women enter the field.

'Ethnic minorities' was the phrase that stumped me. Why do we beat around the bush and use this PC "ethnic minority" crap? I work in a physics lab with physicists, enginneers, and mathematicians. Its like the friggin' UN in there. A guy from Thailand, one from India, a Pacific Islander, a guy from China, a black guy, then two white guys (another guy and I) all work in an office. There is no clear majority! The only real fact is that we're all men. What pisses me off is that we can't say "we wish more blacks would enter the mathematics field," we have to say "we hope 'ethnic minorities' enter mathematics." Ethnic minorities are distributed all throughout mathematics in the US. Asians, Indians, and Arabs are all present in mathematical fields. Maybe when ignorance by the media is overcome, and the real truth is confronted, then we'll see mathematics interest really spike across the board.

some friendly advice

[fliptout]

Seriously, I have this same sort of problem, but the problem is not what you say, it is in the delivery. People are not receptive to intellectual snootiness, even if you did not intend it that way. Instead of a terse "excel is crap, mathematica is much more leet" type of reply, say something along the lines of "I can use Excel, and it is a very useful tool. However, oftentimes I need some extra functionality I can get with only with Mathematica, like the ability to solve differential equations." Learn to talk with people, not down to people. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but get over it and yourself.

I'm trying to do the same.

I am a freelancer mathematician

[coult]

I am a freelancer mathematician (see http://www.northcountrynumerics.com/) . I work in seismic exploration, and also defense-related industries. I don't think it is possible to do this kind off work without having lots of personal connections, though; clients don't want to entrust some random person they've met once with a difficult and important mathematics problem. My work with my clients is much more like an academic collaboration (without the annoying emphasis on publications, though ironically I have more time for publication now than I did when I was in academia) than it is like an engineering or software development task.

The projects are also usually quite specialized, so you can't really walk in and solve someone's problem unless you aren't already quite knowledgeable in that particular sub-field of mathematics, and have a proven record of solving problems in that area.

just like martingale...

[YesIAmAScript]

If you have unlimited capital and no betting limit, you cannot lose.

But LTCM didn't have unlimited capital and did have a betting limit (you can't make a bet larger than the rest of the world is willing to take the other side on).

LTCM was betting martingale. That they had two Nobel prize winners and 250 more years of advancement and still ended up with a system that only works as well as martingale is both in indication of the level of foolishness on Wall Street and a real indication of the difficulty (possibility?) of beating the market with a system.

Anyway, if you read the book (better yet, both), you can see that even if they had a few mathematical equations saying they were right, there's a lot more reasons they were actually wrong. The complexity of the markets is sufficient that you can make an equation showing how safe you are and still be wrong. Your equation is either built on incorrect assumptions or fails to include other factors that turn out to be important.

LTCM was wrong mainly because they were using far too much leverage and thought it was okay because they thought they had multiple independent "wagers" that thus lowered their risk, because the likelihood of two independent failures of their system was very low, and they figured they could survive 3 or more! The problem is their wagers were not really independent and so more than 3 went south at once. They fooled themselves. They were fools, not victims of circumstance.

Here's the one most importance in "When Genius Failed". LTCM's return on working capital was smaller than that of a savings account. Their real trick was being able to borrow capital at such low prices. If they had deposited their borrowed capital in savings accounts they would have made more money faster and not lost their butts either. What geniuses.

Parent's Fault, not Society

[ranton]

I am sorry that your child life was so horrible, but there is no way that it was society's fault that you had it so bad. In your case it is very obvious that it was your parent's fault. Families like these are a drain on our society, and I do not think it is the job of the government to help them out.

First off, 6 KIDS !?!?!?! Stop having kids damn it. If you can barely feed yourselves then do not have kids. I can understand having a couple of "mistakes", but 6 kids? That is both irresponsible and reckless. Instead of trying help their children have better lives, they kept popping out more kids so that you all could have as few opportunities as possible. Maybe some of you turned out fine, but that would be nothing but luck and statistical anomolies.

And a total income of $14000? One parent working full time at $6.75 an hour makes $14k a year. I started working at the age of 15 at a fast food place making $5.75 in 1995. Any adult that cannot make more than $6.75 an hour is incompetent. I worked in fast food for about 5 years total in my life, and knew many adults still stuck in basically minimum wage jobs. Every last one of them were in such positions because they were incapable of actually being useful citizens and holding a decent job.

Any family making $14k a year total is lazy. You cannot blame society or technology because 2 people are irresponsible and lazy.

And before you start calling me some spoiled rich kid, my dad was a small farmer and we did not have much money until I was a teenager. My mother is intelligent, but my father isnt exactly a smart guy (he never got past arithmetic in high school). But my dad was a very hard worker and at least made more than enough to provide for us, even though he didnt own the land he worked on.

I am sure there were factors that would have made it very difficult for your parents to become middle class. But there was nothing keeping them that poor other than themselves.

Very Good!

[Tibor the Hun]

Now if only you can learn to coach baseball you'd have all the makings of a great Highschool math and typing teacher!

Re:Learning more math

[jim_deane]

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