Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 152 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#141

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jordigh wrote: post #140
Myrmornis wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comments here could do with being put in a little perspective. There are programmers reading HN (well, all programmers) for whom one important way they can improve as a software engineer is to improve their powers of abstract thinking. You people who have studied advanced mathematics, any of it, are exceptionally skilled at thinking abstractly. I think there’s a risk of underestimating how useful that is…

I think it's a bit superstitious how we think that being good at math means you'll be good at programming. I'm not complaining, because that superstition helped me. Like I said, my math degree did give recruiters an initial good impression of me. Other than that, I don't think it translates into much of a benefit when writing code. I have personally witnessed many mathematicians write the most atrocious code, myself…

Yes! Remember, FORTRAN survives because mathematicians still use it...

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#142

Post by wdiamond »

Nobody. A real mathematician can make an entire private world. Freedom may scare and block from keep walking. Some people may pay for some "magic tricks" but that small payments are not the end of an infinite path ahead. Keep in mind that rich people things money equals mathematics, which is not true. money is accounting, mathematics is nature hidden language.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#143

Post by Myrmornis »

jordigh wrote: post #140
Myrmornis wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comments here could do with being put in a little perspective. There are programmers reading HN (well, all programmers) for whom one important way they can improve as a software engineer is to improve their powers of abstract thinking. You people who have studied advanced mathematics, any of it, are exceptionally skilled at thinking abstractly. I think there’s a risk of underestimating how useful that is…

I think it's a bit superstitious how we think that being good at math means you'll be good at programming. I'm not complaining, because that superstition helped me. Like I said, my math degree did give recruiters an initial good impression of me. Other than that, I don't think it translates into much of a benefit when writing code. I have personally witnessed many mathematicians write the most atrocious code, myself…

Wouldn’t you say there’s a difference between structured thinking (say, a kind of breadth-first search of ideas with pruning) and abstract thinking (which allows a programmer to, say, identify the need for a Form class on the backend to model and process POST data)? Bad programmers will just keep writing similar code to process the POST data with no abstraction about what is being done and why. Related, mathematicians use lemmas and theorems to reuse thought.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#144

Post by jordigh »

Myrmornis wrote: post #143
jordigh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit superstitious how we think that being good at math means you'll be good at programming. I'm not complaining, because that superstition helped me. Like I said, my math degree did give recruiters an initial good impression of me. Other than that, I don't think it translates into much of a benefit when writing code. I have personally witnessed many mathematicians write the most atrocious code, myself…

Wouldn’t you say there’s a difference between structured thinking (say, a kind of breadth-first search of ideas with pruning) and abstract thinking (which allows a programmer to, say, identify the need for a Form class on the backend to model and process POST data)? Bad programmers will just keep writing similar code to process the POST data with no abstraction about what is being done and why. Related, mathematician…

I think the relationship is as tenuous as being a good cook or a good chess player. Coming up with a unique recipe for cake or a good strategy for checkmate is about equally comparable to writing good code.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#145

Post by Myrmornis »

jordigh wrote: post #144
Myrmornis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t you say there’s a difference between structured thinking (say, a kind of breadth-first search of ideas with pruning) and abstract thinking (which allows a programmer to, say, identify the need for a Form class on the backend to model and process POST data)? Bad programmers will just keep writing similar code to process the POST data with no abstraction about what is being done and why. Related, mathematician…

I think the relationship is as tenuous as being a good cook or a good chess player. Coming up with a unique recipe for cake or a good strategy for checkmate is about equally comparable to writing good code.

OK, I don't think I agree. In the area I work in, writing good code isn't so much about coming up with a clever sequence of moves; a large part of it is being adept at modeling real life situations with abstractions in software, and being adept at manipulating and combining those abstractions, and seeing when and to what extent they can be used more broadly, and knowing how to assess whether the end product is correct to the required degree.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#146

Post by zintinio5 »

n4r9 wrote: post #95
waiquoo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, my PhD is in an engineering field and projects have included a lot of what you mentioned ('graph theory, markov chains, ... cluster analysis and signal processing'...). I just went through a job search and couldn't find anyone very interested in these skills, so I'm back in another postdoc. Any advice on companies/industries specific to those types of methods?

There are a lot of interesting problems in vehicle routing, route optimisation and GPS data processing. There often aren't good libraries which solve them with enough flexibility and performance, and better algorithms are being researched and published all the time. Thus it's quite common for companies to develop in house solutions. A blog post by food delivery comoany Ocado [0] was posted on HN a while back, and I'm…

I will keep this in mind when researching jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#147

Post by zintinio5 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63
godelski wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually be interested in your experience. Personally I have a degree in Physics. Only two classes in programming (majorly self taught) and work in simulations. How does the software engineering field see people like me? I've applied to programming jobs in the past and just never knew if I was under qualified, didn't stand out, or just slipped through the cracks in the large amounts of applications places get. An…

I did a double major, math and physics. I was basically self-taught with respect to computers ( one CS class on my transcript). I got hired as a programmer by a lady with a Master's in math, who was largely self-taught with respect to computers. That first hire is all it takes - after that, I had experience. I graduated in 1984, though, so this may not be very applicable to the current situation...

Still the same situation, even for CS majors from less known schools. Somebody has to take a chance, few people want to take a risk on you.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#148

Post by aklemm »

bjourne wrote: post #134
lmkg wrote: post #9

I graduated with a BSc in Mathematics in 2008, and didn't exactly know what I wanted to do. I just typed the keyword "analyst" into job search engines. It worked pretty well! I ended up getting a job in a field that I didn't even know existed when I started (web analytics). It turns out that almost every industry has some sort of data that they can benefit from having someone analyze it, and a Math degree is a pretty…

I wouldn't say people with BSc in math are "very smart," they are in my opinion wickedly, awesomely super-smart. I have taken some math courses which contain material that math BSc:s go through during the first semester and those were much harder, by a large margin, than any other courses I have taken! But I can't imagine going through three years of that and then have to spend your time with web analytics. It must f…

Meh, most of everything is pedestrian.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#149

Post by mattfrommars »

vong wrote: post #126
En_gr_Student wrote: post #97

I'm a mechanical engineer with strong minors in applied computational mathematics and scientific computing, and math has been, for me, a super-power. It opens all kinds of thermal, structural analyst jobs. I can optimize all kinds of stuff. I can automate simulations and plot the results in ways that the non-technical can get a good idea of the right direction to go. That all comes from math. Can you hand-code a solv…

> Your earnings at age 25 determine your total lifetime earnings Do you have more info on this?

I'm interested in this too. As a 27 year old, if this holds true, it's very, very frightening.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#150

Post by ixacto »

My friend who did a math BS + partial masters from a large state agricultural university got a job at a company similar to this http://www.tricore.org/. understanding statistics and working with VBA in excel were important, moreso than programming which looked like the easy part. There were a couple other people with PHD in math who also work there.
Post reply on HN