When I started university, my father said, “You’re going to get a degree in Business.”
“I don’t want to get a degree in Business; I want to get a degree in Mathematics.”
“No . . . you’re going to get a degree in Business.”
I got both.
At the time I was in the aforementioned Math 300 class, I hadn’t yet gone to the administration office and informed them that I was, in fact, a math major, as well as an accounting major. I think that I did so within the year.
So here’s a real question. Not trying to be snarky.
I freely admit that I don’t have a math background. I think I have the smarts to major in math, but I just don’t care. Math doesn’t interest me. It’s a means to an end, and my high school algebra is definitely enough to do what I need to do.
What, exactly, is the usefulness of a math major? I can understand some of the practical applications of math, especially when it comes to physics or financial economics or something. But just learning math just to learn math seems kinda dumb to me.
But if you want to use your math in physics, then why not major in physics? If you want to be a financial economist, then why not major in finance or economics?
My very own reasons:
Google recruits from the Mathematics/CS/EE folks in my school constantly to the degree that they have a recruiting desk set up there.In the business school the 4 have a recruiting thing going on.I just happen to think the guy with the google experience on his belt has a higher chance for a better MBA/Skill transition than the average joe from Big 4.I may be biased though.So unless you go to Ivy schools maybe studying finance/econ in my view is not the best strategy to end up doing your “high finance” dream job.That is my very uneducated guess though.
With the exception of teaching accounting (a job I got a mere 34 years after getting my Accounting degree), my math major has gotten me every job I’ve had.
I’ve used it in:
However, the real reason for learning mathematics is pretty basic: it’s fun!
By the way, if you hadn’t mentioned it, it would never have occurred to me that you even _ might have been _ snarky with your question.
^This is a man who has truly lived.
Or, at least, one who gets bored easily.
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Only while I was a TA during grad school. I wasn’t a particularly motivated TA, yet many students had told me at the end of the semester that they learned most during my sessions rather than in regular classes (and thats not cause I was a gifted teacher or anything like that but because TA sessions are focused on problem-solving rather than abstract theory).
I am mostly speaking from my experience studying mathematics than teaching mathematics. Abstract definitions and proofs of theorems mostly discourage and confuse beginner students, sometimes the way math is taught unnecessarily perpetuates the stereotype that it is difficult and unpleasant subject.
A lot of that has to do with there being some pretty rotten math teachers out there.
In the last math class I took in high school, one day the teacher decided to prove that √2 is an irrational number.
(For those of you who haven’t seen this, it’s a beautiful example of what’s known as reductio ad absurdum, or proof by contradiction. The idea is that you assume that what you’re trying to prove is false , and show that that leads to a contradiction. As contradictions cannot exist (for our purposes), your premise must have been wrong, so the thing you’re trying to prove must, in fact, be true.)
Here’s what he did:
Suppose that √2 is rational. (This is where we assume that the thing we’re trying to prove is false.) In that case, we can write it as a ratio of two whole numbers:
√2 = m / n.
As it’s possible that m and n have a common factor (e.g., 1.6 = 16 / 10, where 16 and 10 have a common factor of 2), we divide out all of the common factors to get to:
√2 = p / q
where p and q have no common factors. Squaring both sides gives:
2 = (p / q)² = _p_² / _q_²
or,
_p_² = 2_q_²
Thus, _p_² is an even number, so p must be an even number. (If you square an odd number you get an odd number.)
It was at this point that the teacher said that we had our contradiction: p couldn’t be any old number, it had to be an even number.
He was wrong; there was no contradiction there. We know, for example, that 1.6 is rational, and if we write it as a / b, then a has to be even (16 / 10 or 8 / 5 or 24 / 15 or whatever; the numerator is even).
What he should have done (indeed, needed to do) was to continue:
p is an even number, so p = 2_s_, where s is a whole number. Then,
p_² = (2_s)² = 4_s_²
2_q_² = _p_² = 4_s_²
_q_² = 2_s_²
Thus, q_² is an even number, so q must be an even number, say, q = 2_t, where t is a whole number.
Now we have a contradiction: we started out with p and q having no common factor , but they’re both even numbers, so they have a common factor of 2. You can’t have it both ways: either they do, or else they don’t.
Having reached a contradiction, we conclude that our original premise was false, √2 is not rational, so √2 is irrational.
QED
Of course, most of the students left the class bewildered, instead of being impressed with the intrinsic beauty of the proof. That’s what happens when you have a rotten math teacher.
wow you remember questions from high school? I remember I got an 89.4 (3.0) in Honors Calc in college … missed 90 (4.0) by 1 exam question … I don’t forget stuff like that
S2000/bchad/JDV, who is the Most Interesting Man on AF?
This is the true beauty of mathetmatics. Crunching numbers and formulas is just boring
JDV. Even S2000 and bchad would say JDV.
I wouldn’t, but that’s out of sheer ignorance: I never met JDV; he was gone before I arrove.
My BA is in Applied Math. I chose the major not with any kind of ROI or even much of a career trajectory in mind – but rather I chose the major simply because I enjoyed it.
For what it’s worth, I did find that Math majors generally seemed to be more intelligent than those within other majors.
I got a minor in Math, about 30 hours worth of math courses. I’m pretty smart, but I got high Bs in most of the upper level math courses.
I would probably have taken more CS courses if I could do things over. I don’t know if I would have taken more math classes though. Once you get into abstract algebra and topology, I think there are fewer real world applications.
Fixed that for you.
For whatever it’s worth, I don’t believe that you need to be above average in intelligence to major in mathematics.
I do, however, think that it helps immensely if you’re above average in _ verbal _ intelligence and _ spatial visualization _.
Intelligence, broadly, encompasses a host of abilities; some of them are useful in studying mathematics, others are not so useful. And there’s no reason to believe that those that are useful in studying mathematics are any better – in the overall, grand scheme of things – than those that are not.
Topology has been useful in yoga, no??
Like I look at some position and say, “no way that is possible, dude.” Topology, man!
I wanted to get a PhD in Knot Theory, for two reasons:
Imagine my disappointment on reading the introduction to a classic textbook on knot theory in which they mentioned that it is being used to help determine whether two strands of DNA or RNA are the same.
Sigh.
Category theory, I bet there’s no applications there.