Ask Lemmy

theoretically

same way most of higher-academia does, by living off the investments of your parents

Mathematicians are very sought after in finance and (quantitative) consulting as well as in software engineering.

Agencies like the NSA really like mathematicians so there is use for them in cryptography

You get picked up as a pet project by the Financial Engineering Professor at your college who teaches you a lot of statistical wizardry and sthochastic calculus and grooms you to become his newest and greatest quant he can brag to his Wallstreet buddies about. They have already seen your projects with the professor, the interview is pomp.

You make 2M your first year and are making well over 10M by your fifth year. You work 80+ hours a week, making some other people very, very rich. After a decade you are very burnt out and wondered why you ever wanted to do this in the first place. You quit your ridiculously high paying job at your hedge or whatever fund and move to upstate NY to get your teaching credentials and then go teach maths to high school students who will ask "when will this ever be useful" and you smile in your quietude over the whifs of the coffee in your thermos as the students finish the pop quiz of the day.

That's what mathematicians do in my experience.

$1 + $1 = £²

Mathematician here (algebraic topology). Pure maths is pretty much an internship in academia. Applied math is anything between basically physics to actuary and finance. Since pure math is highly academic, though, there is no predefined job path following a degree, which is why the question is as interesting as it is hard to answer.

In academia, we do weird and wonderful things that only a few peers in the world probably will see and understand, due to the highly specialized fields of study. In industry, anecdotally, we do surprisingly little math and are mostly sought for analytical skills and proficiency in problem solving.

Sadly, most people that hire us outside of academia do not know much math themselves. I believe there are lots of real problems that could benefit from having a mathematician working on them, but there is just too little understanding of mathematics to identify the need.

My son has a math degree and does computer programming.

Years ago one of my old military bosses had a math degree, he did stuff for national security. Secret secret stuff. I assumed it was all codes and decoding.

Finance industry.

I knew two mathematicians, both worked at NASA. Met one coaching dance (side job) and one gymnastics (his retirement job). I'm not entirely sure what they did exactly, beyond "math".

Finance, there's a whole lot of arcane statistics underlying risk management.

Tech, the bleeding edge of computer science is really just applied math.

You do math

You out math people who have money so they give money to you.

Data analysis, data science, teaching, statistician, coding, finance and stocks

Well basically, people pay you to do math.
Hope that helped

It's similar to how there are witches on Etsy that you can buy spells from. A customer goes on Etsy and pays a mathematician to do a love sum, or a death calculation, or a good luck multiplication.

I assume you mean ppl who literally have "mathematician" as a job title? A few I could think of...

• I'd guess most likely as an academic researcher. There are academics in just about any field you could imagine, a lot of which are even more abstract/"useless" than advanced math. Not a traditional "job" in the sense that academics don't directly add value to the economy... but are paid to do research that hopefully other people can add value based on. Downside is that these job openings are insanely competitive especially for the aforementioned "less useful" fields, because they are based on an organization having spare money to support research...
• As a cybersecurity researcher maybe? A lot of modern-day cybersecurity (the original "crypto", before it became associated with bitcoin) are based on advanced math, so I'd imagine such expertise is still needed
• Somewhere in finance maybe? A lot of modern-day finance are built on data science/statistics, although I suppose this job fits statisticians better...

• Teaching
• Research jobs
• Tech
• Wall Street shit
• Accounting
• Loss protection such as fraud prevention or forensic accountiing
• Sell dime bags outside your local convenience store
• stripping
• painting houses
• carpentry
• day laborer's
• pouring concrete.

I had a math teacher once tell a joke:

What's the difference between a mathematician and a large pizza?

A large pizza can feed a family of 4.

Although he was a teacher, so he was making alright money I think. But he also looked like Billy Corgan and was a ninja (well at least some degree of black belt).

You work somewhere that can afford to pay you. Physics labs helping research. Universities doing theoretical work. Or you teach.

Those are pretty much it.

Im an electrician so dont expect more insight from me

Maths is the cornerstone of engineering and science. It's probably one of the most versatile skills. Add physics and you have a control/electrical engineer. Add computer science and you have a programmer. Add economics and you have an equity trader. Maths alone has huge scope in research.

What does a mathematician do?

My guess would be maths.

I very briefly had a job as a mathematician for a company that certifies pokies (slot machines). I was technically also a software dev, but my job mainly consisted of calculating the theoretical average returns for each machine, writing basic code to simulate the machine for millions of games and then making sure those two numbers matched. I'd pass that on to a physical testing team who hack them to run real games.

It was a horrible fucking job and I got out basically a month after I finished my training. All we did was prove the machines were exactly as profitable as allowed in whatever location they were going to be deployed at...

Now I work as a regular software developer and it's also a horrible job.