<p>^^ was thinking the same thing; why don’t you just major in engineering? Your degree will be completely setting you up for your career afterwards.</p>
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<p>There are two problems: I don’t know what engineers do and I don’t feel like going through the trouble of transferring to another school.</p>
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<p>And those people with Asperger’s you have in mind possibly have savant skills.</p>
<p>You could have made this into an interesting discussion, pmvd – but instead you chose to make it a rehash of your six million other ■■■■■ threads. Congrats…</p>
<p>oh, we have someone switching major?</p>
<p>I suggest Mime Studies. No speaking at all, just learning movement and maybe you could land a circus job with a bunch of misfits. you’d fit in perfectly!</p>
<p>Whenever people talk about applying math to real-world situations, I think about the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov. Seems like there’s always an unaccounted variable in real-world equations, somewhere.</p>
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<p>Stop saying you’re a math major if you haven’t done (or have any interest) in pure math. It implies that you do. I know that you like applied math. Do engineering. Or some other natural science. Or major in applied math (if your school offers that as a major). Then, say you want to do that.</p>
<p>If you’re having trouble thinking on your feet, it’s because you’re not learning your calculus/diffe like it’s intended. You’re simply memorizing algorithms, and not understanding why or how they work. As a result, you have a hard time connecting abstract ideas to them.</p>
<p>Try and focus more on why than what. If you truly want to major in math, you’re going to figure that out sooner or later. You may be book smart, but it’s ridiculous to see someone not know the difference between pure and applied math (especially when one is his major), and how they can be applied to the real world.</p>
<p>Computer science I’ve also heard uses math skills; why don’t you double major in math and CS? CS majors don’t need a great deal of social skill.</p>
<p>Maybe you’re unhappy since you picked a boring major like Math. You should switch to something interesting like Neuroscience/Neurobiology. It’s pretty sweet and you can do anything you want after. And if you become a neuroscientist, you can spend your life doing something worthy, neurological research, and be anti-social just like you want! Unlike physicians, they don’t have to have people skills or interact with patients. </p>
<p>Oh my gosh, you should become a dentist! You don’t have to talk too much, your patients can’t talk to you since your hand’s stuffed in their mouth all the time. It pays well and you’re smart, right? And I think you can major in whatever for undergrad, you just have to take some pre-dental classes. Awesome idea, I know ;)</p>
<p>STOP FEEDING PMVD.</p>
<p>Really unless you’re doing business or something then your major DOESN’T MEAN ****</p>
<p>I endorse all of Molly’s points on this thread, I believe. </p>
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<p>To be perfectly honest, those who got far enough in math tended to drop out of it generally because it was too hard. Those who didn’t get far enough tended to like other things better. But really, I can think of things that most people would find a little cool about math at the very least.</p>
<p>pmvd,</p>
<p>Since you can’t understand even the most basic of arguments, what makes you think you will get an amazing career regardless of what you study?</p>
<p>You will never get a job doing anything important, no matter what you major in. Stop hating on math. At least with a math major employers are going to expect you to be a little geeky. You talk about not making a lot of money, it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t follow basic arguments so you can forget about making tons of money. Is that what you wanted to hear?</p>
<p>I’ll sum up your argument:</p>
<p>pmvd: Math majors can’t get any good jobs, they make low amounts of money. I’m a math major, I’m screwed!</p>
<p>Everyone else: No. <strong>insert mountain of evidence</strong></p>
<p>pmvd: No, that evidence is flawed for reasons I won’t explain! I’ll continue making flawed arguments to try to convince people of my point!</p>
<p>If you’re just can’t understand the arguments people are making then you should read back over your previous threads. Stop making new threads that merely restate already refuted points.</p>
<p>aw Mathboy9 I was kind of kidding with my whole post. Well not joking but i don’t know, I’m always slightly sarcastic. </p>
<p>Yeah i’m sure there’s cool things about Math, but just like Neuro, most people don’t want to study it. Just like many Math/Engineering majors end up Business majors, many Bio/Neuro majors end up in Psychology :)</p>
<p>And Euler321 and Molly9 have been pretty spot on. No sense in arguing with someone who likes to complain about the same thing over and over and never gets it. I think pmvd is secretly joking and a normal person in real life.</p>
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<p>From one math major (enthusiast) to another math major (perhaps not enthusiast), why’re you so certain you can’t find any job to do with math? That’s a pretty broad statement. I think you probably can find a job that’ll be remotely interesting to you, especially given earlier in this thread, you seemed to mention you prefer many topics to the traditional, mainstream pure mathematics ones. This is actually very healthy for your career prospects. </p>
<p>Sure, generally financial positions probably are awarded to math majors who’re smart (as Molly said), not specifically for their mathematical depth. But there are aspects to engineering, i.e. mathematical modeling, which are heavily intense in aspects of math that are very “impure” to me. Signal processing, for instance – you’ll do all this stuff with Fourier Transforms, Z-Transforms, etc. </p>
<p>Not something I would consider appetizing myself, but that’s because I myself find pure mathematics amazingly interesting, and only hope I end up being good enough at it.</p>
<p>If you can’t find a job with a math degree, you could always go into porn. I hear the money’s good.</p>
<p>Well Stargazer, there are actually people who’ve said math is just not interesting to them, and yet often times, they’ve just not even gotten to the good stuff! A little calculus and differential equations is hardly representative of math; I don’t even remember a lot of that stuff in the slightest, and don’t have to use it. So I try always to give my little talk :)</p>
<p>Sure, I know lots of people have tried to convince PMVD – for what it’s worth, maybe some others will read this thread and something I say is remotely helpful!!</p>
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LOL, forever playing the role of the shy virgin math geek who gets it on with the older, sexier teacher assistant. I imagine there’s a market for that type of stuff 
And don’t even complain you’re ugly Pmvd…have you seen Ron Jeremy?!! </p>
<p>Mathboy, would you believe there’s people who don’t find science interesting either? it seems like a lot of people are scared off by the lack of easy A’s and retreat to majors which make it easier to drink regularly 
not that there’s anything wrong with that.
anyway I doubt anyting we say will make a difference to the OP. he’ll find an excuse as to why he must live as an isolated recluse forever. </p>
<p>I was only half-kidding when I suggested Dentistry. It’s not a bad profession…</p>
<p>Stargazer – probably fewer of those. The truth is, high school math is most people’s real exposure to math, and even I have to say, AP Physics was probably cooler than AP Calculus back in the day. I wonder if I’d have been a math major if I didn’t study a bunch of math past AP Calculus in high school in the first place. It’s because I got to some of the juicy stuff that I actually realized it was for me. </p>
<p>A friend of mine who is in college and loves subjects like history actually explained to me that she preferred biology and physics in high school vastly to math basically because the math was dry on average, and unfortunately by the time she took BC Calculus (in senior year), which could’ve been somewhat interesting, she no longer cared enough to take it seriously. </p>
<p>The abstraction barrier that must be crossed before one can generally make beautiful observations in math tends to turn many away. Somehow or the other, I have convinced my electrical engineering buddies to sample some higher level math, promising I’d help them get through it if need be!</p>
<p>Most students are not patient enough, is the truth – I see all these biology students doing research, CS students doing projects and internships – what do the pure mathematicians do? Unless they’re into something requiring “cleverness” rather than mounds upon mounds of technical machinery and abstraction, there is little taste of research that most of them can get into. This is probably part of the issue, and maybe if pmvd is in fact real, this is part of what turns him off about the subject/major.</p>
<p>And as I said, I respond to OP’s arguments taking it with a grain of salt whether they are officially heeded, as whether it’s all a hoax or not, there’s plenty of information to be thrown out there!</p>
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<p>I am currently taking Real Analysis. I don’t like it. And if my major is called “math” why shouldn’t I call myself a math major?</p>
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<p>That’s false, I don’t memorize algorithms. Also, the type of interview puzzles I have in mind are not the type of problems that you’d find in your calculus/differential equations book.</p>
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<p>I don’t know the difference between pure and applied math? See my other threads. I grant you, though, that I still don’t know what to do with ONLY a math degree, pure or applied.</p>
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<p>You misunderstand. I believe that math majors can get a lot of good jobs, provided that they are really good at math.</p>
<p>A lot of people on this forum seem to believe that the average math major has what it takes to get the jobs that, in actuality, only gifted math majors can get. They are wrong.</p>
<p>Another fallacy here is that my question is “what can a person do with ONLY a math degree?” And these guys, instead of answering that question, answer the question “what jobs won’t I be prevented from doing with a math degree?”</p>
<p>When I ask what can I do with ONLY a degree math, I mean exactly that. If a job requires a graduate degree or additional skills or college courses in a non-math subject, then it can’t be done with ONLY a math degree.</p>
<p>The stereotype that the only relevant job the average person can do with only a math degree is teach math clearly came from somewhere.</p>
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<p>I understand their arguments very well. I think the problem is that you don’t understand mine.</p>
<p>It may be possible if, by “only math degree” you mean to say you <em>only</em> have the skills associated to a math major, and at that a pure one, your career prospects may be limited. Generally, I will actually agree that those with pure math degrees who managed to do something else with their lives (other than academia, for instance) probably did have knowledge outside of the math degree, or in fact, even certainly. Or, they were savvy in some sense, and could kind of learn stuff on the job.</p>
<p>To be fair people, I myself couldn’t see myself being well-suited for a job outside of teaching/academia with my current track/training. However, this isn’t to say that I couldn’t make some sort of consistent effort to go into something else. And that’s what I suggest, pmvd, if you don’t see yourself going into academia for whatever reason. </p>
<p>You can get jobs with ONLY a math degree if you have skills from elsewhere. You could study for actuarial exams, for instance. Doesn’t require getting a new degree, for one thing. </p>
<p>While I do agree whining about it isn’t the way to go, I do believe in my heart of hearts that there are people out there who’d find it very hard to bring themselves (not due to lack of intelligence) to pick up other skills after doing excessively theoretical majors.</p>