First off, I have no interest in being a mathematician. Math was always and continues to be quite difficult for me.
So, as an outsider to advanced math, it blows my mind that there are people who’s entire job title is mathematician. How does that work? What does a mathematician do?
You do math
I assume you mean ppl who literally have “mathematician” as a job title? A few I could think of…
- I’d guess most likely as an academic researcher. There are academics in just about any field you could imagine, a lot of which are even more abstract/“useless” than advanced math. Not a traditional “job” in the sense that academics don’t directly add value to the economy… but are paid to do research that hopefully other people can add value based on. Downside is that these job openings are insanely competitive especially for the aforementioned “less useful” fields, because they are based on an organization having spare money to support research…
- As a cybersecurity researcher maybe? A lot of modern-day cybersecurity (the original “crypto”, before it became associated with bitcoin) are based on advanced math, so I’d imagine such expertise is still needed
- Somewhere in finance maybe? A lot of modern-day finance are built on data science/statistics, although I suppose this job fits statisticians better…
It’s similar to how there are witches on Etsy that you can buy spells from. A customer goes on Etsy and pays a mathematician to do a love sum, or a death calculation, or a good luck multiplication.
Whats the going rate for good luck multiplications nowadays?
To tell you that, I’d need to a “describe number” ritual which is $30
Do you take nfts as payment?
Gift cards only I’m afraid
Depends on which kind of mathematician you ask for, can he utilize said math in engineering, for example, or does he only know pure math?
Well basically, people pay you to do math.
Hope that helpedData analysis, data science, teaching, statistician, coding, finance and stocks
Finance, there’s a whole lot of arcane statistics underlying risk management.
Tech, the bleeding edge of computer science is really just applied math.
I thought applied math was just buying a silly amount of apples…
No, that is appled math.
Sauce?
angry updoot >:c
I’m pretty sure your job title isn’t “Mathematician” though. You’re a “risk analyst” or “quantitative analyst” or something. You’re also not doing pure math, you’re using somewhat advanced applied mathematical processes to model financial information. Just like how a rocket engineer isn’t a physicist but may have a background in physics.
Maths is the cornerstone of engineering and science. It’s probably one of the most versatile skills. Add physics and you have a control/electrical engineer. Add computer science and you have a programmer. Add economics and you have an equity trader. Maths alone has huge scope in research.
Earning my ways with programming almost anything on anything for 40 years, let me tell you that a) I’ve never needed anything I learned in my universities math courses, and b) mathematicians make horrible programmers because they might know the theory, but often lack on the real programming side.
I call bullshit.
If you were coding in the 80’s i have hard time beliving you did not use math in Pascal or COBOL. And i remember needing lots of math with anything 3d in 2000
Also you cant state all mathematicians make horrible programmers because they often lack the “real programming side”. Its not a boolean. They might be bad coders because they are bad at coding, not because they are mathematics. Its like saying all painters are bad writers. Both coding and math have a lot of overlapping qualitities and people who understand other have easier time learning other, but it does not mean they are inherently good or bad in the other one.
I’ve never needed anything I learned in my universities math courses
You’ve been inverting matrices left and right. You just didn’t realise.
Add computer science and you have a programmer.
I mean, while this definitely does happen in reality, in particular if you count data scientists towards programmers, I feel like I need to point out that neither knowing computer science, nor maths, makes you a good programmer.
In fact, if you tell me someone is a computer science professor, I will assume that they are a bad programmer, because programming takes practice, which is not something they’ll have time for.
I had a math teacher once tell a joke:
What’s the difference between a mathematician and a large pizza?
A large pizza can feed a family of 4.
Although he was a teacher, so he was making alright money I think. But he also looked like Billy Corgan and was a ninja (well at least some degree of black belt).
- Teaching
- Research jobs
- Tech
- Wall Street shit
- Accounting
- Loss protection such as fraud prevention or forensic accountiing
- Sell dime bags outside your local convenience store
- stripping
- painting houses
- carpentry
- day laborer’s
- pouring concrete.
You work somewhere that can afford to pay you. Physics labs helping research. Universities doing theoretical work. Or you teach.
Those are pretty much it.
Im an electrician so dont expect more insight from me
Or software development. Math majors tend to make good programmers.
What does a mathematician do?
My guess would be maths.
Yes, of course. But what math? For who? In what setting?
Pure mathematicians often answer questions that really only other pure mathematicians care about, but occasionally their results or techniques have relevance in other fields, so universities will pay them to work on this stuff and publish papers. Usually part of the job is applying for grants to fund your research and teaching students.
Doesn’t that depend on the kind of math you studied?
Innit?
I very briefly had a job as a mathematician for a company that certifies pokies (slot machines). I was technically also a software dev, but my job mainly consisted of calculating the theoretical average returns for each machine, writing basic code to simulate the machine for millions of games and then making sure those two numbers matched. I’d pass that on to a physical testing team who hack them to run real games.
It was a horrible fucking job and I got out basically a month after I finished my training. All we did was prove the machines were exactly as profitable as allowed in whatever location they were going to be deployed at…
Now I work as a regular software developer and it’s also a horrible job.
So… How profitable were they?
It depends on the region, we were certifying globally. I don’t remember the numbers that well, it was years ago and I only did a few months there, but I think it’s something like a 98% return for the player, so if you put $1 in, you get 0.98¢ back on average.
Did you also calculate the variances, or just the means?
Margin call - https://youtube.com/watch?v=Elyfo1DIlzs - 1:31 mark
I’ve had two software developer coworkers with math degrees
