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Any math students around here? ...I really want to know if there are different/divergent motivatios to study math. Because I think about doing another degree, and I wonder if math would be the right thing for me. It’s just so fascinating...but is this enough? (I’m neither dumb nor a genius...) So, if you are a math student or want to go in that direction, share your ideas!

thx
maw

maw : if you find maths fascinating it's quite a good start but you have to think about the future and the kind of job you want to do.

Mathematics will lead you to a PhD then to a researcher / teacher position. There are also applied mathematics but you might find them less fascinating. They will give you more opportunities in private companies though.

You might want to think about that seriously since finding a good position in the university / lab / department of your choice can sometimes prove very complicated.

In France, you have close to no choice for your first positions and you usually end up in any random city / university till you manage to slowly make your way and get more and more options with years.

Or you end up in some private north american lab or university because what they propose is often much more attractive, on almost all aspects :)

Hyde could probably give you a few hints about that too ;)

I've found this page gathering some nice links about math and images: http://archives.math.utk.edu/images.html
Dunno if it can be a sort of "motivation" but personally I really like when maths meet arts (I'm not a math student, sorry ;)
Thinking about math and images also Paul Bourke comes to mind: http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/
(I've just realized now that he's in Australia o_o)
Also: in these .edu domains you can maybe find some further informations about related courses, dunno... good luck :)

Of course these two sentences are unrelated, I just forgot to postpone the () part :)

I'm after math, and I'm happy about it. Although I don't know if this will motivate you ;)

Pff. Real man study Physics. And REAL man study Electrical Engineering.

*men *men

Another? What did you study before?

Doing a math degree is certainly a good way to spend your time, but unless you end up in academia, which most people don't, there's a very good chance that you won't directly use what you've learnt (you will probably have a good use of it indirectly, though). So from a career point of view, it's a risky decision. If you are not a career-building-type of a person, then it's ok :).

You may also try physics, which is pretty close in a sense and also has it's own beauty... but then you won't understand math :) [oh, the charms of modern western education :)]

I worked with a math degree guy in my previous job (test tools and automation in MS Office). Math and CS have a lot in common. So, you -can- make good money as a maths guy.

my motivation for studying math (and not computer science) was that i wanted to try out something that's more challenging than a subject i devoted my whole life to(pc's). i gave up due to various reasons, not only that math needs a shitload of time and devotion to fully understand it, studying isnt cheap and realizing that i wouldnt pass my pre-diploma ("vordiplom") anyway in regular time made me gave up, regarding the fact that my only source of income - bafög(the system that gives students money for their living expenses, based on the parents' income) would have stopped their payments if i didn't pass this in time. in the same time i stopped, studying-fee's were introduced in germany, but i didnt feel like working AND studying, because that would probably have just ended in less time for math and less free time at all. and i enjoy having some free time where i can devote myself to OTHER stuff. (e.g. coding, music, drugs ;)

math is something for you if you're really willed to learn it, have a good level of abstract thinking and have no problem learning math vocabulary. and if you can keep your focus on one thing long enough. ;) just my two cents.

I was a math major and I thought it was totally awesome, though I'm not that smart and it was easily the hardest thing I'd ever tried to achieve. But it was the subject I loved most and therefore I put in the effort and extra work to make up for not being as clever as I'd like.

I did eventually graduate, and found that while math teaches you how to take a system apart and understand how it works, it's not as impressive a credential to get you in the door of the job market. Once you're there though you can do very well.

Most math majors (at least at my school) go into academia or insurance or computer work.

But yeah make sure you love proofs because hoo boy are there a lot of proofs.

DON'T!!!

No a joke.

Oh yeah??!?!/1 ? PROVE IT : D

Seriously now, it's an interesting thread.

I should write something too as I also have done it (I mean the math studying thingy). Well it just happened. There was a sheet of paper where I checked boxes with various university subjects and math was among them. According to the results of some written exams that every greek pupil took at the time, someone could enter his first choice or any of the later. Math was not my first choice, not that I was sure or me who decided for the 1st one. So it just happened that I studied this subject. It didn't exactly happened that I had as a hobby computer programming but in a sense it did too. Whatever, it needs maths, but usually not the math I use in computer graphics. I think it's overrated when people drool at demos and think it needs some very high level math to do this. But that's just my opinion..

To get the diploma I did 8 years, exactly twice than the required (Fortunately they don't kick you out in greece if you are a lazy student, or at least they didn't in the past (I don't know if anything changed, there were new laws discussed but I am not sure if they have passed yet, being uninformed myself..)).

The math studying was too theoritical for my taste. Too much of the same thing without getting the practical (or maybe historical) aspect of the thing. Anyways, I was too lazy too. I think that even if I studied anything else, I still would be lazy. Even computer science. But it would be better, maybe more motivation, maybe less effort. My first choice was electrical engineering (my parents choice and everyone's choice: parents choose for their children to either be doctors, lawyers or electrical engineers here in greece. Also they wish their children to get a job as civil servants. Or teachers. Everybody wants to be a teacher. That's why to get a job as a teacher someone might have to wait for years because there are no free positions). Ok I got this good job as a programmer and my friends ask me how, since I have no diploma on informatics at all. I guess demos saved me this time :)

-----

As for maths themselves I think I never managed to be fluent enough with the symbols and expressions as I am not fluent with german but I am at least with english. Speaking about it, coming as a natural thing or almost, not struggling to read or understand or getting a sentence out of my mouth. At least in math, when I see an expression I slowly and painfull decode it as a total and usually I try to make sense out of it (which could make it even slower, maybe I should just try to read it as I read a sentence without trying to make a meaning at first). Also I can't be given a theorem and solve it in no time as some do (but that's normal I guess, though this way I have to read and memorize the proofs, instead of trying to solve it from scratch in less than half an hour in written tests, maybe they were supposed to be memorized but I hate that one). Anyways I won't even find a good hint, unlike when I try to think of an algorithm on computer programming myself alone. In the first case it just doesn't come (maybe because I don't want or I get bored while at the second I only know the problem I want to solve and have an insight and wish to find some hints about the solution and go through there?). I don't know,. I was ok with maths, but never too good to make them more bearable. But I use them finely in demos without much struggle. I think I am a visual mathemtician and than goes for demoz..

Ahahahahah, well played.


You actually bring up a pretty good point. I'm no programmer, but oince I finished math demos became more interesting to me, since I have kind of an idea of the sort of calculations going on, so I can appreciate it better.

QED.

That statement needs a qualifier or two. ;)

maw, regardless of what degree you are thinking about taking, a study in Mathematics, pure or applied, is never wasted in my opnion. Maybe a Ph.D. can turn out to be a waste of time, but everything up to and including a Master's degree I think would benefit you later.

What Keops mentions is correct, but I would worry about that later. Put your focus at what you are doing right now, take one year at the time. If you like maths, I would do go for it and if then you think it stinks you can just drop out and use what you learned in a different arena. Spending a year on calculus, group theory and linear algebra with some basic real analysis is probably one of the best investments you could make with your time.

By the time you have to choose between pure and applied maths and their respective sub-genres, you probably already know what you like.

these sort of talks make me miss the days when i was still the smartest in class. i remember when flyers interviewed kids who were already in high school, who all said that math was the most difficult subject, and then when i got there, it was like "what are functions" and how to draw a parabole. kind of an anti-climax.

but then! then i went to university, and all of a sudden like everyone was smarter (and/or more disciplined) than me! it sucked, so i got drunk instead. that part was nice again.

moral of the story, don't feel bad if half the class is smarter than you once you picked math! or something!

Sorry for the late reply, I'm busy at the moment. As I said, math would be a second study, right now I'm studying graphic design (with focus on interactivity). Although it's quite fun sometimes, I feel that I want to do something else, with more... depth?
OK, back to work, I'm gonna type some more text tonight.

Back in my university days in France (applied-computing in industry engineering) I remember of a girl who came after one year of pure maths. She had just given up after one year NOT because she was lame at it but just because she realized it was kinda too much theorical for her.

All I can say is that she was a murderer in maths. She even got some respect from our maths teachers. Most of the time all of us were crawling in the mud because the maths level required was known to be high and actually was. Though she was telling us that it was easy for her especially compared to what she did the previous year.

Since it was mostly applied mathematics she was very good in all the resulting knowledges like computing electronics, physical, automatic... where she had no previous technical experience at all ...

I remember I once spoke with one of my teacher and he said that he has had many of those kind of student profile in the past and all of them were majors at all subjects where maths were involved.

So, I'd say that exclusively working on maths theory should not be a waste of time at all :)