<p>“If the computer is going to do all the math for you, then why do they want you to have a background in Fourier transforms?”</p>
<p>There are computer programs that do all kinds of things: finite element programs that calculate stresses, optical programs that ray trace, signal processing programs that do autocorrelation calculations etc. There is an old saying: “garbage in = garbage out”. You just can’t hit the bottom and get the right answer. With fft routines, you have to rearrange the elements in the array, you need to make certain that your sampling is correct. If you don’t set things up correctly, you will get all kinds of bizarre results and when you show them to your boss, he’ll realize that you don’t know what you’re doing and you’ll be fired.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, I’ll give you a specific example. A few years back, I needed a calculation done. It involved stresses induced in CaF2 from temperature gradients. I had an ME do the calculation using some CAD program (I think) and it showed that if there was a temperature increase of 1degree C, that the material would effectively explode. This result is absurd. His stress calculations were off by 6 orders of magnitude. He didn’t understand the program and he didn’t understand roughly what result he should get. He was layed off within 6 months. You need to have a pretty good idea of what the result is going to be before you do the calculation so you know what to expect.</p>
<p>In case you guys didn’t know, pmvd is a ■■■■■ that creates threads to discredit math majors. He keeps making posts in the college life section dealing with exactly this topic. </p>
<p>The entire point of this post is for him to prove that getting a math major is useless. He thinks having a math major means not relying on elective credits to gain an application. His ideal job would be sitting at a desk with a stack of problem sets. It doesn’t matter what people tell him, he ignores everyone’s responses. </p>
<p>I am of the opinion that it is the person, not the major, that determines the attractiveness for employment.</p>
<p>Undergraduate education doesn’t really teach anybody enough about anything to be trained for a specific job. It’s meant to provide background and develop mental abilities. This is a good thing. Specific jobs go away, but a college education can provide you with the capacity to do many different kinds of jobs.</p>
<p>Is Math or CS or Physics or Engineering better? It depends on the person. You should go with whatever you like best. They all teach you approximately the same thing, anyway: attention to detail, an appreciation for numbers and calculation, and a logical way of thinking about how things work. The rest is details.</p>
<p>I’m a CS/Physics double major. I’m confident that I could learn 99% of math topics in a fairly short amount of time. My girlfriend is an Aerospace major; I’m sure I could learn enough about aerospace topics to be useful to a real-world project in short order. That doesn’t mean math is easy or that there isn’t a lot to know about aerospace. The majors are just close enough that a good student can pick up enough to be as good as the next guy and bluff their way through the rest.</p>
<p>I am trying to find a reasonable excuse to major in the subject I like.</p>
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<p>No, the entire point of these posts is for people to prove to me that a math degree is useful. Ultimately, that’s what I want to hear, but there needs to be proof. If you are going to tell me a platitude like “study what you like and the money will follow” or “it’s not your major, it’s what you do with it”, etc, then you haven’t told me anything and I am going to question your advice.</p>
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<p>In that case, it is possible that I am studying the wrong subject. I want to study a subject that will prepare me for a specific job, so that by the time I graduate from college and start a job doing whatever subject I studied, I am already prepared for it. I don’t want to graduate from college just to find out that before I can go into some industry, that is, before my degree is of any use to me, I have to jump through more huddles. For example, it was mentioned in this thread that I might go into engineering with a degree in math, provided that I complete, at the very least, a semester or two worth of engineering courses. I don’t have that much time to spare; if I wanted a proper engineering education, I would at least attempt to get a proper engineering education.</p>
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<p>In my case, it wouldn’t be so easy. I am not the type of person who is very apt for on-the-job training or learning dry, difficult subjects in a short amount of time. This is a personal shortcoming, not a shortcoming with my major. That’s why I need to make sure I choose the right major.</p>
<p>That’s a problem, though, you see, because not even engineering majors learn enough in undergraduate classes to be very useful right out of school. It can develop potential… but the potential is to be able to learn enough to be useful, not to know specific things.</p>
<p>Math majors are highly valued not because what they learn in school is incredibly useful, but because what they learn in school is incredibly difficult. A graduate prep. program in mathematics is probably the most difficult major out there. A student smart enough to do well in such a program is probably smart enough to do well in any intellectual field.</p>
<p>It probably is the case that they do not know enough about engineering to get engineering jobs straight out of undergraduate school. However, math majors are probably looked upon quite well by graduate engineering programs (note: I may be making this up, but it does sound reasonable to me), and could get engineering jobs after receiving a graduate degree.</p>
<p>I think that they would have to “make up” some undergraduate engineering coursework, but most likely nowhere near the entire undergraduate requirements for the major. Maybe, say, 3 courses or so in “core” areas or at least in the proposed specialization area.</p>
<p>It looks like you’ve never worked on a real-life project of any sort. That’s understandable, considering that a math major is so theoretical… I’m guessing that most of your education involves going to lecture, understanding the material on your own, and working out problems and proofs? Well, real life projects are much much different.</p>
<p>The thing is that college does not prepare you to go to work, unless you go to a trade school or technical school. College prepares you to go to college again, for graduate school. Which means that you are being conditioned to handle theory and research, not industry-level projects. I mean, most of my professors have never even worked in industry… how do you expect them to be able to show you how things work out there? Engineering tries to incorporate some level of training for industrial applications, but even so I notice very little in my education that is directly applicable to real-life projects. </p>
<p>From the outside-of-class projects that I’ve worked on so far, I’ve noticed that you just don’t care about a lot of theory… seriously, no one sits there figuring out Maxwell’s equations, or applying node-voltage and then mesh-current methods and what-not… you just develop a high level plan and use software (like Matlab, Pspice, Altium, etc) to develop your project and the software takes care of all the details. Sure, when complications arise it really helps to know your stuff, but on a first-order analysis, its really not necessary. Now this doesn’t mean that what I’ve learned in school is “useless.” It gives me all the understanding I need to be able to actually design a project, but the methods involved in realizing a project are quite different from the methods you’re used to employing in school. You really only need a solid high-level understanding of most concepts and you’re good to go. </p>
<p>So what this means is that no matter what you do, you’ll have to jump through hurdles even after you’re done with college. The fundamentals will stay the same (ie: nothing’s going to change about Fourier analysis, or Maxwell’s equations) but the specifics (ie: the softare involved, the protocols of design, and the huge variations in the application of theory from project to project) will continually change and you’ll have to “jump hurdles” to keep up with such things.</p>
<p>So it turns out that the only way to avoid having to jump a lot of hurdles upon graduation is to do NOW what you want to be doing LATER. You want to be an engineer? Then forget classes and school, you’ve got a lot of math on you, its enough to show that you have aptitude… figure out what you want to be working on and work on it NOW. Maybe you like signal processing? Well, find out more about the field and come up with a project to work on… design an equalizer for an audio signal, for instance (its a bunch of Fourier analysis). Get a book or two, invest into some software (ie: MATLAB) rather than shelling money for classes and school. Sure, if you have the time and money take a class or two in the field you’re interested in, but don’t expect class to somehow magically transform you into an engineer. To become an engineer you must do what an engineer does, and trust me if you are able to design and complete even two large projects on your own, you’ll already be ahead of most engineers who are simply banking on their education to get them a job (which the employers know is really not worth all that).</p>