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?
105 Comments
Bassman1805@lemmy.world · 107 pts · 250d
Finance, there's a whole lot of arcane statistics underlying risk management.
Tech, the bleeding edge of computer science is really just applied math.
West_of_West@piefed.social · 40 pts · 250d
I thought applied math was just buying a silly amount of apples...
nokturne213@sopuli.xyz · 89 pts · 250d
No, that is appled math.
nylo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 250d
angry updoot >:c
Vandals_handle@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 250d
Sauce?
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 249d
No, whole.
merc@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 250d
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.
AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
So the 6' 4" guy in finance is just a tall math whiz?
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world · 43 pts · 250d
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
TheRealKuni@piefed.social · 13 pts · 250d
Or software development. Math majors tend to make good programmers.
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 249d
Their job title isn't mathematician though.
IWW4@lemmy.zip · 42 pts · 250d
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works · 39 pts · 249d
You get picked up as a pet project by the Financial Engineering Professor at your college who teaches you a lot of statistical wizardry and sthochastic calculus and grooms you to become his newest and greatest quant he can brag to his Wallstreet buddies about. They have already seen your projects with the professor, the interview is pomp.
You make 2M your first year and are making well over 10M by your fifth year. You work 80+ hours a week, making some other people very, very rich. After a decade you are very burnt out and wondered why you ever wanted to do this in the first place. You quit your ridiculously high paying job at your hedge or whatever fund and move to upstate NY to get your teaching credentials and then go teach maths to high school students who will ask "when will this ever be useful" and you smile in your quietude over the whifs of the coffee in your thermos as the students finish the pop quiz of the day.
That's what mathematicians do in my experience.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 249d
congrats on being rich af
GladiusB@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
I feel like Vince Gilligan wrote this
BreadOven@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 250d
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).
grissino@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 248d
Ah, professor Seldon. I've heard of him
nokturne213@sopuli.xyz · 25 pts · 250d
My guess would be maths.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 250d
Yes, of course. But what math? For who? In what setting?
kogasa@programming.dev · 4 pts · 249d
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.
pressedhams@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 250d
Doesn’t that depend on the kind of math you studied?
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 250d
Innit?
Formfiller@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 250d
Data analysis, data science, teaching, statistician, coding, finance and stocks
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca · 20 pts · 249d
Well basically, people pay you to do math.
Hope that helped
Urist@lemmy.ml · 19 pts · 249d
Mathematician here (algebraic topology). Pure maths is pretty much an internship in academia. Applied math is anything between basically physics to actuary and finance. Since pure math is highly academic, though, there is no predefined job path following a degree, which is why the question is as interesting as it is hard to answer.
In academia, we do weird and wonderful things that only a few peers in the world probably will see and understand, due to the highly specialized fields of study. In industry, anecdotally, we do surprisingly little math and are mostly sought for analytical skills and proficiency in problem solving.
Sadly, most people that hire us outside of academia do not know much math themselves. I believe there are lots of real problems that could benefit from having a mathematician working on them, but there is just too little understanding of mathematics to identify the need.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 249d
An actual mathematician has arrived!
So, it seems from this whole thread that math for math's sake is not a money-making endeavor, but being the guy who runs the numbers for a company or institution is where the money comes from.
Is there a lot of stigma in pure math circles against people who move on to do applied mathematics?
Urist@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 248d
Speaking from a pure maths' perspective here: Frankly, a little bit. I think at the university research level, the academically inclined professors might be a bit tired to be sidelined with the applied ones, especially when the latter are applauded for their industrial cooperation (read research investments) and appliances (read private ownership over publicly funded research). My study mates and I joked about applied math being dirty, but in reality it is more the absence of creativity and rigor that is the problem with applied math in my opinion.
To me, math is all about answering cool questions, sometimes posing even cooler questions in the process. Maybe an appropriate analogy would be whether an artist judges those that make commercials. Exploratory work can take a life of their own that is usually not possible when the format of the answer is predefined. That being said, I do not really judge, I only think that the different expressions are (usually) quite distinct in direction and content. I did not do math for money, though I rely on my mathematical skills for income.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 248d
This is such a neat window into a whole different world for me, thank you for writing all this out!
It does sound very much like artists and the whole conversation of who's selling out and who is being true to the art.
It seems to me that we definitely need both types in this world, ones like you who are curious and just want to explode the edges of what we understand for the sake of discovery, and ones who are willing to apply their mathematic knowledge to narrowly defined problems.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 249d
Honestly I would love to hire a statistician to do the analysis on any clinical research I do. I just wanna collect the broset scores every shift and request and assign staff to best balance them then let somebody else count how many (hopefully less) people got punched by patients vs not doing that. No way even the research hospital would've paid for that though.
BilboBargains@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 250d
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.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 249d
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.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 249d
You've been inverting matrices left and right. You just didn't realise.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 249d
That's not university level.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 249d
It is.
Inverting a matrix is undergraduate level, particularly the advanced algorithms.
Also the reasons why you need to invert a matrix are taught at university, not high school.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 249d
Tell this to my math teacher. On the other hand, school here is a bit tougher than in the US.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 248d
Well, if you are already doing LU decomposition then I'm impressed.
MrFinnbean@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 249d
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.
BilboBargains@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 249d
I suppose it depends what the program is for. If it's UX then probably not a lot of use to know advanced maths. I was thinking about the process of creating mathematical models of physical systems and embedding them in an ECU or creating encryption schemes or deriving models from large datasets. Maths trains us to think logically. Computers are fundamentally logical and must strictly obey mathematical rules if we want answers.
Ephera@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 249d
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.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml · 15 pts · 250d
They make good actuaries and my cousin with a math PHD designs efficient packaging which is apparently really fucking hard to do, way more complex than you'd expect
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 249d
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 14 pts · 250d
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.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 250d
So... How profitable were they?
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 250d
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.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 249d
Thanks! I would have thought it be less for sure.
Is it so that the cash builds up and augments the chance of winning the more you lose (reward mechanism)? I read somewhere the coins were physically dumped in a bucket (huess some went yo the bank) and the heavier it weights the bigger the chance of winning it (like when completely full you insta-win). Guess if it existed it was an ooold machine :-)
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 249d
It's just a regulated amount set by the government of each region, the manufacturers want to make them as profitable as possible, but the regulations say they can only be so profitable. The thing is, if you're losing 2% per game, it doesn't seem like much, but the point of slots is you play a lot of games, people sit there for hours and hours and the machines can run multiple games at once in some cases. You can lose all your money quite quickly.
I never worked on physical machines so I can't really answer any questions about coins, I just got data sheets with the reels on them and info about stuff like custom rules and bonus rounds.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 248d
Yeah it's maybe more insidious with a 2% loss rate too. I went to a casino once in my lifetime because friends, lost like 20€ split in 4 actions, and that's it. Had I been able to play for 20 minutes, gaining a little but eventually losing it all I might have felt I got something for the money for example.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 249d
Did you also calculate the variances, or just the means?
TheRealShadeSlimmy@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 250d
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analysis_(finance)
coherent_domain@infosec.pub · 11 pts · 250d
I am not a mathematician, but sometimes I get accused of being one; so given that no real mathematician have answered, I guess I can give it a shot.
Mathematician are in charge of building mathematical tools that are used by physicists, computer scientists, and many other subjects, including artist.
Why is math useful: mathematics are used in social science, physics, computer science and many other subject. Take a simple example from computer science: everyone is very excited about quantum computing, but what questions can be answered faster by a quantum computer than a classical computer? This is both a computer science question and also a math question. Many mathematicians are working on problem like these.
What is the difference between mathematican, computer scientists, physicist, and so on: although people from other subject also use advanced mathematical tools and work on similar questions as mathematicians (I guess why I was accused of being a mathematician), the difference is in their approach. Typically, for non-mathematicians (like me), proofs and math tools are means to an end. We often want to prove a very concrete problem (like are two reasonable ways to define the meaning of a program are equivalent), and usually we prefer the proof the takes the least amount of effort to get to the conclusion. Whereas mathematician often makes connection between different approaches, generalize, and just explore things that they feel is interesting. The mathematical approach often is slower but also gives deeper understandings: although it is common for many of their insights to be lost through time, it is also quite often for these exploration leading to important breakthrough in other fields.
What is the life of a mathematician like: like every other academic: teaching, research, writing grant to feed yourself, and sometimes traveling to discuss ideas and start new projects. I imagine OP is most interested in is mathematical research. I feel the most apt analogy is the creation of art: for an artist, they usually have a emotion trying to express, either something they see or feel. Then they do a couple sketch, see what detail/style works in expressing their ideas and what doesn't, then paint the painting. For mathematicians, they often have a question in mind, then they try some examples to see what steps closer to their goal and what leads to dead ends. Through these excersices they gain a intuition of what conditions are important for the desired conclusions, then they paint the full painting by finishing the proof.
These proofs can be exceptionally time consuming: even for computer scientists, they can easily take couple researcher a year of work to do a proof. Most of the sketches will be thrown away, either because they are too convoluted or because they don't lead to the correct conclusion. Usually, a proof by computer scientists like me can easily take 20-30 pages to explain properly, if not more; and the proof that were thrown away can double that quantity. I can only imagine proofs for mathematicians will be even more energy consuming.
AmidFuror@fedia.io · 8 pts · 250d
Have you been accused of being an LLM?
coherent_domain@infosec.pub · 8 pts · 250d
Ha, because I bold stuff. Yeah that does look a bit like LLM on retrospect.
But you can see these are not AI generated, because they like repeating trivial conclusions reached in previous paragraphs, which I hope I didn't do. :)
Also grammar mistake is another giveaway.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
That's exactly what an LLM pretending to be a human would say ;)
Typotyper@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 249d
My son has a math degree and does computer programming.
Years ago one of my old military bosses had a math degree, he did stuff for national security. Secret secret stuff. I assumed it was all codes and decoding.
solariaseven@slrpnk.net · 10 pts · 250d
I've had two software developer coworkers with math degrees
nostrauxendar@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 249d
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.
emax_gomax@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 249d
Whats the going rate for good luck multiplications nowadays?
nostrauxendar@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
To tell you that, I'd need to a "describe number" ritual which is $30
emax_gomax@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
Do you take nfts as payment?
nostrauxendar@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
Gift cards only I'm afraid
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 250d
Actuaries make a good living using mathematics for risk analysis.
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 249d
A degree in mathematics and pass about 10 tests and you will be making north of 200k
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 250d
Actuary? This is a job title I haven't learned anything about
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 250d
Basically the people who do the math on risk management for things like insurance and finance.
It’s typically a very regulated job with tests required for different levels. But the pay is good and it’s one of the highest job satisfaction careers out there.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 249d
You do math
INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 248d
Woah slow down.
titter@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 248d
theoretically
zlatiah@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 249d
I assume you mean ppl who literally have "mathematician" as a job title? A few I could think of...
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 249d
Applied math works everywhere, from engineering, to public health, finance, logistics, insurance...
ShotDonkey@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 249d
Finance industry.
Blackmist@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 248d
Danny Moses: You're completely sure of the math?
Jared Vennett: Look at him, that's my quant.
Mark Baum: Your what?
Jared Vennett: My quantitative. My math specialist. Look at him, you notice anything different about him? Look at his face.
Mark Baum: That's pretty racist.
Jared Vennett: Look at his eyes, I'll give you a hint, his name is Yang. He won a national math competition in China! HE DOESN'T EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH! Yeah I'm sure of the math.
severalkittens@ani.social · 6 pts · 250d
A friend of mine works for a baseball team as a statistician making incredible amounts of money.
shads@lemy.lol · 4 pts · 250d
My maths teacher back in the late 90s had his little side job doing Cricket stats. He always described it that way. Imagine my surprise when he came clean one day and mentioned he made more money from 8 hours a week doing Cricket stats than he did from 40+ hours a week teaching. He "jokingly" asked if I had made my first million a year after I graduated, mentioned it to my mum and she told me he had turned a $100k inheritance into his first million 2 years later thanks to buying some property in the path of a resort 6 months before planning application was submitted at age 18.
shalafi@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 250d
Surprised no one has mentioned jobs like the NSA. They're thought to be the largest single employer of mathematicians.
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 250d
The analytical skills needed for an advanced math degree are transferable to wide variety of jobs. The tech companies I worked for actively sought out people with those skills, mostly for jobs that didn't require high level math.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 250d
A solid foundation in optimization makes your skills useful pretty much anywhere.
IronBird@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 248d
same way most of higher-academia does, by living off the investments of your parents
thevoidzero@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 250d
I don't know a lot about other fields but stat people are hired a lot by research institutions. A good statistician can reduce the number of experiments you need to do, being able to test a drug/treatment with 7 people instead of 100 means a lot. They save a lot of money.
Also being able to make inference from past data, incomplete data, use correct math (there is always different ways to solve things) so they don't make mistakes.
And a lot of people with stat degree join either academia, or other fields that have actual problems and use their background to solve issues.
thefluffiest@feddit.nl · 4 pts · 250d
Make Numberphile YouTube vids
dingleberrylover@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 248d
Mathematicians are very sought after in finance and (quantitative) consulting as well as in software engineering.
RBWells@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 249d
I knew two mathematicians, both worked at NASA. Met one coaching dance (side job) and one gymnastics (his retirement job). I'm not entirely sure what they did exactly, beyond "math".
toynbee@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 249d
I got offered a job at NASA. It was very tempting, primarily because I would have gotten to see space maneuvers.
However, they had no WFH openings and the department that was offering me a position was only using technologies with which I was already familiar. Unfortunately I had to decline.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 250d
There are a lot of different fields of math, and some of them are more useful than others.
Applied math is generally difficult but useful for ask kinds of things from finance to weather prediction.
Pure math is often more academic/paid for by universities.
And most universities realistically pay for math professors by having science and engineering classes take math courses, and by grants for research.
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 250d
And what about mathematologists like me?
Edit: What do you have against Mathematology?
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 250d
I really should have said monetizable instead of useful.
Fokeu@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 249d
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?
Zombiepirate@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 250d
You could get hired as a consultant for a state-of-the-art zoo.
AmidFuror@fedia.io · 4 pts · 250d
Would they spare any expense?
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 248d
Agencies like the NSA really like mathematicians so there is use for them in cryptography
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 3 pts · 249d
You out math people who have money so they give money to you.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 249d
The trick is you make it a complex black box so that no one knows how it works. See debt derivative models.
NGram@piefed.ca · 3 pts · 250d
From my, admittedly limited, interaction with mathematicians in my life and a bit of extrapolation:
There's a lot of overlap between all three but I roughly split them up based on where I'd expect the majority of jobs like that would be (e.g. I'm sure NASA employs a good deal of mathematicians, but so does Lockheed Martin and friends). Also a lot of people get a degree in mathematics and then specialize further with a masters and/or doctorate in computer science or physics, since both of those can be quite math-heavy and are better-funded fields.
fullsquare@awful.systems · 2 pts · 250d
does DSP count as maths, because there's plenty of that in radar design. or any other sensor with some double-use potential for that matter
NGram@piefed.ca · 1 pts · 250d
I wouldn't count it as just math. Probably more science or engineering. I did some DSP stuff during my computer engineering degree. But then again, science is applied math and engineering is applied science.
fullsquare@awful.systems · 1 pts · 250d
CS and advanced statistics is what lots of applied math is anyway
MarriedCavelady50@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 250d
gedhrel@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 250d
Spooks (governmental, NGO or the companies who have convenient offices nearby) are always interested in hiring mathematicians.
AmidFuror@fedia.io · 3 pts · 250d
Something about these answers isn't quite adding up. Are the commenters just trying to divide us?
Some comments seem like the product of some kind of operator. It's as though they have a quotient they're trying to fill for number of posts.
As the number of comments multiplies, I have to wonder if they think they are making a difference.
Nemo@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 250d
Teaching, winning grants and awards, paid analyst
Crazyslinkz@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 250d
Physicists get jobs everywhere. They require lots of math, but other info too.
Not really an answer as I don't know any specific math majors other than teaching?
balsoft@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 250d
In the very old times, you'd have to be born rich already to do maths. You then don't concern yourself with making a living, because your slaves do it for you.
In the old times, you'd live the same as artists: find a rich dude (exceptionally rarely: dudess) to pay your bills, and in exchange name shit you discover/invent after them.
Last few decades you also have a couple new options. You can work (teach) at a university for pennies, and typically have a second job/side hustle so that you can actually survive. And/or you can write books/make a YT channel, and if you're lucky and get popular enough, that can be your living then, but it's probably not going to be anything too advanced. And/or, if your area of expertise has some vaguely practical application (e.g. cryptography or statistics), you can actually find a job that pays you to do theoretical research in that area in hopes of finding practical application, but you'd have to be pretty lucky to get that.
slothrop@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 250d
By figuring it out.
INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 248d
$1 + $1 = £²
Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 250d
I always thought of maths as a language, and physics as using that language to describe everything in the world. I often describe my physics degree as a degree in problem solving, so a maths degree would be similar but more abstract problem solving. So for jobs just about anything that is technical or requires abstract thought.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 250d
I have a friend working on a Master's in math. Get back to me in a year or two, and I'll let you know what he's doing.
solrize@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 250d
Watch a few fast.ai videos and boom, you're an AI researcher making millions.