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Hi, I'm Amanda and I'm a discrete math major at Carnegie Mellon University. I made this page for two main reasons. First of all, I'm taking this required course this semester called Math Undergraduate Colloquium which is all about helping math majors decide what to do with their lives, so I figured I would share all this information with all of you people. Second of all, I have NO idea what I want to do with myself careerwise, so I thought it might help me out to organize all this info. Believe it or not, not all math majors end up being either math professors or accountants. There are a lot of interesting opportunities out there for us.
I'd like the mention that a lot of the information on this page came from a handout from class that I believe was put together by Renee Starek, Carnegie Mellon's MCS Career Consultant (MCS=Mellon College of Science). Thanks Ms. Starek!
Last updated: October 6, 1999
If you think of technology as the application of science, you can kind of see that applied math is the "technology" side of math. I don't know if this is a good analogy or not. You are taking math and applying it to practical situations (hence the "applied" in the name). Here is a blurb from one of my handouts: "Develop new theories and techniques for solving practical problems in business, government, engineering, and the natural and social sciences. Work ranges from analysis of mathematical aspects of launching communications satellites to studies of the effects of drugs on disease."
This is kind of the flip side of Applied Math. In other words, Applied Math is the "technology" side of math and Theoretical Math is the "science" side. Theoretical math is involved with developing new theories (hence the "theoretical") and gaining new mathematical knowledge.
This is without a doubt the best area in mathematics. No, I'm just kidding, they're all equally important, I just happen to like discrete math best (which is why I'm majoring in it). Discrete math is non-continuous math. If you're not a math person and you don't know what that means, it means that you're generally dealing with finite sets and integers. In calculus-type math, you're dealing with numbers that get infinitely large and infinitely small. Any two numbers have an infinite amount of numbers between them. This is not the case in discrete math. Discrete math is often closely related to computer science. It includes areas like number theory, graph theory, set theory, etc.
Statistics is probably the area in math that most people are most familiar with. I guess that technically statistics is part of discrete math, but it's application is so wide and statisticians are so much in demand that it is it's own specialty. I'll look up a better definition at some point, but for now suffice to say that statistics deals with how often and in how many ways things happen. It's usually paired with probability, which is the likelyhood that something will happen. Statistics is probably used most in cases where someone is trying to predict what might happen in the future. For this reasons, Statisticians can find work in business, politics, science and technology, etc.
I'm going to add to this list as I find pertinant sites. If you have or know of a site that should be in this list, please email me at margaret520@hotmail.com. Thanks!Theoretical Mathematics
Discrete Mathematics
Statistics
Operations Research
Helpful Links
P.O. Box 6248
Providence, RI 02940
www.ams.org
This is an excellent site. You can find out what jobs jobs math graduates hold in industry, post questions to professional mathematicians, and actually get some information designed for undergraduates.
1529 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
www.maa.org
You can find more career advice here and read essays by professional mathematicians.
3600 University City Science Center
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Regular Homepage: www.siam.org
Undergraduate Homepage: spicerack.sr.unh.edu/~siamug
The page aimed at math undergraduates includes listings for permanent and summer positions.
www.yahoo.com/Science/Mathematics/Institutes
www.yahoo.com/Science/Engineering/Applied Mathematics/Institutes
These lists can be a good resource for researching math departments while looking for graduate schools.