JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com

go to sites like nuclear phynance, or so a quick job search on PhdJobs.com or cityjobs with keywords like “quant” and “Phd” and you’ll see the jobs available that require PhD in heavy computational subjects.

To dispute the power that PhD mathematicians have over the stock market is absurd – derivative and options trading, interest rate swaps, are all money making tools that *have* made billionaires…..

And, of course, plenty of people have screwed up and lost too.

I’ve certainly yet to see any proof of the utility of these mythical models. Of course, you’ll tell me that nobody gives their money making secrets away for free, but that’s hardly an argument. At the least we should be seeing billionaires appear from nowhere, with no explanation of how they did it.

While I dispute the value of PhD level maths in the stock market, lets be clear: science is impossible without maths and science is the basis of all modern living. We need maths.

I mean, nobody says “what’s the point in getting A-level english, it’s not needed for any job you are ever going to do….

ditto RE, Art.

Maths is worth studying because it is interesting. When most people say ‘maths’ they mean the arithmetic and basic algebra/trig. Probably agree that arithmetic and some algebra is dull, but thats nothing but one of the basic tools of maths that you need for the interesting stuff.

It’s like saying “pH testing is dull, so chemistry is dull”

As for KPMG etc, it’s no surprise they don’t need any real qualification in maths. Accountancy, etc is a utilitarian job with plenty of ‘people’ focus.

The people making the real money (for themselves, at any rate) in finance have very often have PhDs in maths/physics/theoretical chemistry – people who can model stochastic process like derivative price fluctuations and write decent code to implement the models.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/10/2

The main reason I lament this is not because I can’t see a lack of potential applications, but that most careers and life in general do no expect any level of numeracy.

My colleagues who actually have higher mathematics degrees have most usually ended up working in some capacity related to the art of spying, code breaking, or betting on financial markets.

Does anyone else find it slightly displeasing that the Queen of the Sciences is being referred to in such a mercenary manner?

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2271594,00.html

Jody

However, what did surprise me was the overall information they had collected about mathematical skills:

About 20% of the population had the math skills needed for the “top” 10% of jobs (ranked according to their use of math). This represents an oversupply of people who have slogged through advanced maths and who will not use it on the job.

About 10% of the population had such poor skills that it affected their job prospects: These are people who couldn’t make change or figure out how much money should be in their bank accounts.

So I think there’s some truth to the complaint that we’ll never need this stuff on the job. (Not that your career is the only reason to study maths.) Certainly the bottom 10% of people have some problems.

However, while we might not be turning out enough few super-maths people, I doubt that we have too few people with the skills to be an accountant, a nurse, or an engineer.

All true. However, the conclusion that educationalists will draw from this is that children need more compulsory maths and more testing. This will continue, as it does now, to put people off maths for life.

This is sad because even arithmetic is interesting if you are allowed to approach it freely, when you are ready.

See John Holt’s classic: “Why Children Fail.”

1. You can’t infer anything about causation from correlation. There are any number of reasons why two things can be correlated. In this case it may be that they have a common cause such as intelligence and/or parental wealth both of which are related to income and academic achievement. Huff discusses something very similar (income related to college education) in How To Lie With Statistics in the chapter on the Post-Hoc fallacy.

2. Even if there were no alternative hypotheses it would not in any way support this one.

3. Quite often if there is a correlation a “decent hypothesis of a causal mechanism” can be found.

It could be that brighter people tend to take A-level maths, and brighter people also do better at work and get paid more. In this case, it’s not that having A-level maths causes you to get a higher salary, but that both these things are caused by a third variable, the intelligence of the person.

I’m not denying the usefulness of A-level maths, but i do agree with teej that correlation != causation.

At work, over my entire 18 year career the most advanced maths I’ve used is a solving a simultaneous equation which resulted in a quadratic equation (non imaginary). This has happened twice. And for anyone who can’t remember, that is covered in O Levels.

> Yet another example of correlation != causation.

Just because correlation isn’t causation, that doesn’t mean that every single case in which correlation is used as evidence of causation involves false reasoning.

We’re talking about tens of thousands of people over decades here, and we’re talking about a relationship between education and employment, which some people believe may be related. It’s hardly Skinnerian logic. Please, do explain to us your alternative hypothesis for where the correlation comes from. Unless it’s amazingly convincing, I think I’ll stick with correlation plus lots and lots of instances plus other evidence of demonstrable relatedness between the correlated things plus a decent hypothesis of a causal mechanism implies very probable causation.

> In the private sector it may help me get to interview … but it would mean nothing to my salary which is based on your ammount and type of experience as far as I can see.

Your salary is also based on whether you actually get the job. Hence, helping you get to interview helps to increase your salary — from the salary you would have if you didn’t get the job you wanted to the salary you get in the job you want.

> My salary is entirely dependent on the ammount of my experience (I can show you the pay sturcture if you like)

What possible relevance would that be? No-one comes up with figures about the effect of maths A-level on salary by looking through lots of employers’ pay structures to see which ones mention it. It’s done by comparing the actual salaries of people with and without maths A-levels. It appears not to have occurred to you that studying maths teaches you reasoning skills which are useful in a wide range of applications — including non-mathematical ones — and will therefore help you to do better in life. It’s nothing to do with whether you use Newton-Raphson methods at work every day. It’s to do how much more successful is the sort of person who can get their head around Newton-Raphson than the sort of person that can’t.

> I have been in my chosen career for almost a year now

Well, I can see why you would be absolutely 100% positive of the affect of your maths A-level on your entire fifty-year career, then. However, I’ll just chuck my own anecdotal experience into the ring, as a counterexample, if I may.

After university, I got a job sorting mail in a call centre, which led to work on the phones, which then shimmied sideways into call traffic forecasting and reporting, which led directly to a much better job with someone else, which led to opportunities to learn programming. I’ve gradually become a software engineer over the last few years, while also picking up all sorts of interesting IT things. At no point until this year have I ever needed a single qualification to get a job, yet in every single job the reasoning abilities I learnt in maths (and philosophy) have enabled me to move up the organisation and get more money.

Twelve years after graduation, I have, for the first time ever, got a job that requires a qualification: my employer doesn’t take anyone unless they have an A at A-level maths and pass a written test to demonstrate they haven’t forgotten it all. My salary increases from one year to the next are based directly on how many more relevant mathematical techniques I learn. I seem to remember, a few years ago, telling people that my qualifications had never been any use in getting a job. Had I only added “and never will be,” oh, how stupid I would look now.

And I use A-level maths stuff on a daily basis.

Yet another example of correlation != causation. Just because people with a maths A-level earn £3k/£10k more on average does not imply that getting a maths A-level “puts on average an extra” however much.

I had a very annoying maths teacher who insisted that past pupils were forever contacting him to attest that Further Maths was the only A-level that they had found at all useful in later life. I feel I can reasonably dissent from this position myself, but I do have to admit that understanding the basis of principal component analysis has been pretty useful. And re using calculus, yes ha ha, but you can’t deny that understanding what’s meant by the rate of change of something with respect to something else has fairly widespread application.