3 of the Top Jobs in America involve Math

Although in Singapore currently doctors and lawyers are the top jobs, the trend is changing, starting with the most technologically advanced country – America. 3 of the top jobs in America are about Math. As the world becomes more dependent on technology (and hence mathematics), Mathematics will play a more prominent role in the global scene. Eventually the change will come to Singapore too, as more and more jobs require mathematical skills.

According to our Law Minister Mr Shanmugam, Singapore is facing a glut (excessively abundant surplus) of lawyers, which means that Singapore may not have so many jobs for lawyers. “The study of law provides an excellent training of the mind, so I don’t want to be seen as discouraging people… but you have to have a realistic understanding of the market, the economy, the total structure,” said Mr Shanmugam – See more at: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/more-singapore-stories/story/singapore-facing-glut-lawyers-shanmugam-20140817#sthash.BojzeqhX.dpuf

Hence, young students may want to consider a new discipline that is Math related, like Actuary, Math, or Statistics. To read up more about what true Mathematics is (it is very different from high school mathematics, where students just practice differentiation and integration), check out this book How to Think Like a Mathematician: A Companion to Undergraduate Mathematics.

Site: http://www.businessinsider.sg/best-jobs-of-2015-2015-4/#.VTEI7ZPoaKg

Perhaps if you had known that some of the best jobs of 2015 would require mathematical skills, you would’ve paid more attention in your high school algebra class.

Professions like actuary, mathematician, and statistician are three of the top jobs in America right now, according to CareerCast.com, a career guidance website that just released its 27th annual Jobs Rated report.

“Jobs in mathematics rank among the nation’s best jobs because they are financially lucrative, offer abundant opportunities for advancement, and provide the opportunity to do great work in a supportive environment,” says Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com, in a press statement.

Here are the 10 best jobs of 2015:

2015 Rank	Job Title	Mid-level Income
1	Actuary	$94,209
2	Audiologist	$71,133
3	Mathematician	$102,182
4	Statistician	$79,191
5	Biomedical Engineer	$89,165

mathematician — University of the Fraser Valley/flickr

Intellectual wealth

An interesting news to share:

Source:http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=21&art_id=152297&sid=43527569&con_type=1&d_str=20141212&fc=8

Billionaire Ronnie Chan rather be mathematician or scientist if he could live life over

Billionaire Ronnie Chan Chi-chung seems to have it all figured out. Were the Hang Lung Properties chairman to live his life over again, it would not be as a businessman — he’d be a mathematician or scientist instead.

Chan, who offered this little gem during a speech at the Hang Lung Mathematics Awards ceremony, said he may have more material wealth than famed mathematician Yau Shing-tung but much less intellectual wealth.

As co-founder of the awards, which were set to encourage secondary school students to pursue maths and sciences, Chan urged youngsters to go the extra mile and become mathematicians or scientists as they can contribute more to society than what a businessman can.

Hopefully this can encourage students currently studying Maths, be it O Level Maths, JC H1 or H2 Maths, or even University Maths!

Featured Book:

The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions

New Scientist
“It is a testimony to [Yau’s] careful prose (and no doubt to the skills of co-author Steve Nadis) that this book so compellingly captures the essence of what pushes string theorists forward in the face of formidable obstacles. It gives us a rare glimpse into a world as alien as the moons of Jupiter, and just as fascinating…. Yau and Nadis have produced a strangely mesmerizing account of geometry’s role in the universe.”

Nature
“Physicists investigate one cosmos, but mathematicians can explore all possible worlds. So marvels Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau…. Relating how he solved a major theoretical problem in string theory in the 1970s, Yau explains how the geometries of the vibrating multidimensional strings that may characterize the Universe have implications across physics.”

Mathematicians prove the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture

Source: Science Daily

Mathematicians prove the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture

Date: December 15, 2014

Source: Emory University

Summary: Monstrous moonshine, a quirky pattern of the monster group in theoretical math, has a shadow — umbral moonshine. Mathematicians have now proved this insight, known as the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture, offering a formula with potential applications for everything from number theory to geometry to quantum physics.

“We’ve transformed the statement of the conjecture into something you could test, a finite calculation, and the conjecture proved to be true,” says Ken Ono, a mathematician at Emory University. “Umbral moonshine has created a lot of excitement in the world of math and physics.”

Co-authors of the proof include mathematicians John Duncan from Case Western University and Michael Griffin, an Emory graduate student.

“Sometimes a result is so stunningly beautiful that your mind does get blown a little,” Duncan says. Duncan co-wrote the statement for the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture with Miranda Cheng, a mathematician and physicist at the University of Amsterdam, and Jeff Harvey, a physicist at the University of Chicago.

Ono will present their work on January 11, 2015 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Antonio, the largest mathematics meeting in the world. Ono is delivering one of the highlighted invited addresses.

Review

“An excellent introduction to this area for anyone who is looking for an informal survey… written in a lively and readable style.”
R.E. Boucherds, University of California at Berkeley for the Bulletin of the AMS

“It is written in a breezy, informal style which eschews the familiar Lemma-Theorem-Remark style in favor of a more relaxed and continuous narrative which allows a wide range of material to be included. Gannon has written an attractive and fun introduction to what is an attractive and fun area of research.”
Geoffrey Mason, Mathematical Reviews

“Gannon wants to explain to us “what is really going on.” His book is like a conversation at the blackboard, with ideas being explained in informal terms, proofs being sketched, and unknowns being explored. Given the complexity and breadth of this material, this is exactly the right approach. The result is informal, inviting, and fascinating.”
Fernando Q. Gouvea, MAA Reviews

Mathematics Memes and Cartoons

Source: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/item/37443-career-memes-of-the-week-m/

This week’s career memes are an ode to mathematicians, the numerical wizards who use their knowledge to solve practical problems in disciplines such as business, commerce, technology, engineering and the sciences.

A mathematician’s job involves performing computations and analysing and interpreting data, reporting conclusions from a data analysis and using those findings to support or improve business decisions, and developing mathematical or statistical models to analyse data.

Many mathematicians work for governments or for private scientific and R&D companies.

Career memes of the week: mathematician

Mathematician meme

Best Jobs in the World mostly related to Maths?

Students in school are advised to practice their Math! It turns out many of the best jobs in the 21st Century are related to Maths. Even if you are not thinking of becoming a Mathematician, it is good to know your Quadratic Equations well. Math may prove useful when you need it in your job!

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-it-comes-to-jobs-mathematicians-are-no-1/

Want one of the best jobs in the nation? Then do the math — and do a lot of it. According to a new report, mathematicians, statisticians and actuaries are now three of the four best jobs to be had.

The CareerCast.com report ranks 200 jobs each year based on a number of criteria, including income, outlook, environmental factors, stress and physical demands. Mathematician, this year’s No. 1 job, and statistician, No. 3, both jumped up 17 places from last year’s ranking. Actuary, last year’s winner, fell to No. 4, while tenured university professor took second place on the new list.

Mathematicians came in first because demand for people who can do statistical analysis is growing in all business sectors. That need is expected to lead to a 23 percent increase in demand by 2022. As you might expect, the pay isn’t too bad. Last year, mathematicians earned a median annual salary of $101,360.

“In today’s data-driven economy, math skills unlock a world of career opportunities,” Tony Lee, CareerCast’s publisher said in a statement. “In fact, the outlook for all STEM careers is very positive, as evidenced by many of this year’s best jobs — mathematician, statistician, actuary, software engineer and computer systems analyst.”

Source: https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~kouba/MathJobs.html

Why Choose a Mathematics-Related Profession ?

Mathematics teaches patience, discipline, and step-by-step problem-solving skills. For those with a substantial background in mathematics, an unlimited number of career opportunuities are available. According to Jobs Rated Almanac , a 1990 publication of World Almanac Books of New York, NY, careers that require a very strong background in mathematics were listed as the five “best” jobs. They were :

software engineer
actuary
computer systems analyst
computer programmer
mathematician

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/04/15/best-jobs-of-2014-congratulations-mathematicians/

Another day, another reason to get better at math.

It’s no secret that quantitative skills are in high demand on the job market—one analytics recruiter recently told The Journal that workers who can’t crunch numbers may ultimately face a “permanent pink slip.”

Now, a new ranking from the job-search website CareerCast.com names mathematician as the best occupation of 2014. “Math skills unlock a world of career opportunities,” publisher Tony Lee said. (Cue the Square One theme, and tune in Mathnet.)

Data whizzes of all stripes fared well in the annual list: Statisticians (No. 3), actuaries (No. 4) and computer systems analysts (No. 8) all landed near the top.

Mathematicians pull in a midlevel income of $101,360, according to CareerCast.com, and the field is expected to grow 23% in the next eight years. Other high earners include actuaries and software engineers, who can expect to earn about a midlevel income of $93,000 per year.

Speaking of math, the list is tallied by scoring 200 types of jobs according to four categories: environment, which rates things like competitiveness; income at low, middle, and high career positions; the outlook for income and employment growth; and stress factors such as travel and deadlines.

Really hate math? Want to change your mindset about Math? Read this award-winning and Top Selling Math Book:

Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail

A Mathematician’s Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form

A Mathematician’s Lament is a short book on the pedagogics and philosophy of mathematics by Paul Lockhart, originally a research mathematician but for many years a math teacher at a private school. Characterised as a strongly worded opinion piece arguing for an intuitive and heuristic approach to teaching and the importance of mathematics teaching reforms, the book frames learning mathematics as an artistic and imaginative pursuit which is not reflected at all in the way the subject is taught in the American educational system.

The book was developed from a 25-page essay that was written in 2002, originally circulated in typewritten manuscript copies, and subsequently on the Internet.

Math Jokes

This is the ultimate source of Math Jokes on the Internet: http://www.math.utah.edu/~cherk/mathjokes.html

Know any other funny Math Jokes? Post it in the comments below! 🙂

Top 5 Math Jokes:

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were traveling through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train.
“Aha,” says the engineer, “I see that Scottish sheep are black.”
“Hmm,” says the physicist, “You mean that some Scottish sheep are black.”
“No,” says the mathematician, “All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black!”
The physicist and the engineer are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. They yell out for help: “Helllloooooo! Where are we?”
15 minutes later, they hear an echoing voice: “Helllloooooo! You’re in a hot-air balloon!!”
The physicist says, “That must have been a mathematician.”
The engineer asks, “Why do you say that?”
The physicist replied: “The answer was absolutely correct, and it was utterly useless.”
There are three kinds of people in the world; those who can count and those who can’t.
Salary Theorem The less you know, the more you make. Proof:
Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power

Postulate 2: Time is Money

As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time And since Knowledge = Power and Time = Money It is therefore true that Knowledge = Work / Money . Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work / Knowledge Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.
An insane mathematician gets on a bus and starts threatening everybody: “I’ll integrate you! I’ll differentiate you!!!” Everybody gets scared and runs away. Only one lady stays. The guy comes up to her and says: “Aren’t you scared, I’ll integrate you, I’ll differentiate you!!!” The lady calmly answers: “No, I am not scared, I am e^x .”

On the road to make math fun: An army major who quit to become a mathematics teacher

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120625/jsp/calcutta/story_15629755.jsp#.Uq7JOJVDGDk

On the road to make math fun

MITA MUKHERJEE

Madanlal Baldevraj Ghai during the city leg of his tour. Picture by Sayantan Ghosh

An army major who quit to become a mathematics teacher has embarked on a self-funded tour of the country to promote the subject.

Madanlal Baldevraj Ghai, 70, stayed in a dormitory at Howrah station to keep costs down during the three days he spent in Calcutta recently, meeting officials of the primary and secondary board and the school education department to offer suggestions on how to make the study of mathematics more interesting.

“India has produced brilliant mathematicians not just in the Vedic and medieval ages but also in modern times. Unfortunately, for quite a few years, not many students have been pursuing the subject at the higher level, which has resulted in a decline in the number of top-quality mathematicians,” the former teacher at PMN College in Rajpura, Punjab, told Metro.

“We, the elderly mathematics teachers, need to reach out to students and guardians in every corner of the country to dispel the misconception that mathematics is dry and boring,” added Ghai, who has an MPhil in the subject and is pursuing his PhD at Punjabi University, Patiala.

His 50-day tour was also prompted by the Prime Minister declaring 2012 as the year of mathematics as a tribute to Srinivasa Ramanujan, the autodidact mathematician who died in 1920 at the age of 32.

Study Tips for Mathematics

Here are some useful study tips for Mathematics. The key to acing Maths is to understand that practice is key for Mathematics!

Sincerely hope these tips help.

Please do not study Maths like studying History, Literature or Geography, the study method for Maths is totally different and opposite from studying Humanities. Reading a Maths textbook without practicing is not very helpful at all.

Once a student understands the basic theory of a certain topic (usually just one or two pages of information), he or she can move on to practicing actual questions immediately. While practicing, the student will then learn more and more knowledge and question-answering strategies for that Maths topic.

Even if you already know how to do a question, it is useful to practice it to improve on speed and accuracy.

The study strategy for Maths and Physics are kind of similar, hence usually you will find that students who are good in Maths will also be good in Physics, and vice versa.

Students from China usually do very well in Maths exams because they understand the strategy for studying Maths (which works very well up till JC level), namely a lot of practice with understanding. The strategy is called “题海战术” in Chinese, which means “immersing oneself in a sea of questions”.

Source for diagram below: Email from JobsCentral BrightMinds

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (/ɡ aʊ s /; German: Gauß, pronounced [ɡaʊs] ( listen); Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss) (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physical scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, electrostatics, astronomy and optics.

Sometimes referred to as the Princeps mathematicorum^[1] (Latin, “the Prince of Mathematicians” or “the foremost of mathematicians”) and “greatest mathematician since antiquity“, Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history’s most influential mathematicians.^[2]

Continue reading at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss

Does one have to be a genius to do maths?

Source: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly. (José Ortega y Gasset, “Notes on the novel”)

Does one have to be a genius to do mathematics?

The answer is an emphatic NO. In order to make good and useful contributions to mathematics, one does need to work hard, learn one’s field well, learn other fields and tools, ask questions, talk to other mathematicians, and think about the “big picture”. And yes, a reasonable amount of intelligence, patience, and maturity is also required. But one does not need some sort of magic “genius gene” that spontaneously generates ex nihilo deep insights, unexpected solutions to problems, or other supernatural abilities.

Continue reading at http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/

Mathematics is an art

Taken from http://www.maa.org/devlin/lockhartslament.pdf

The first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art. The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. Everyone understands that poets, painters, and musicians create works of art, and are expressing themselves in word, image, and sound. In fact, our society is rather generous when it comes to creative expression; architects, chefs, and even television directors are considered to be working artists. So why not mathematicians? Part of the problem is that nobody has the faintest idea what it is that mathematicians do. The common perception seems to be that mathematicians are somehow connected with science— perhaps they help the scientists with their formulas, or feed big numbers into computers for some reason or other. There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the “poetic dreamers” and the “rational thinkers” most people would place mathematicians in the latter category. Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood. So let me try to explain what mathematics is, and what mathematicians do. I can hardly do better than to begin with G.H. Hardy’s excellent description: A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.