jobs for math majors

warbrain
Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:23:12 +0000

For some reason, people have weird ideas about applied math, but applied math is just math, except the problems you work on have intended applications. So these include things like differential equations, probability, numerical methods, theoretical computer science, combinatorics, and much more. The nature of the research is still the same though, and I would think that applied math would be even less structured than a pure math program, since the different branches are much less related to each other than the branches of pure math. But it could also be that you might find some subject in applied math more interesting than anything in pure math, in which case this might be a good path to follow.

I think the biology you mentioned would be more suited for a graduate program in applied math, or computer science, than just a pure biology program, but I could be wrong here.

Operations research is just another branch of applied math that’s also related to computer science and business. People are probably suggesting it to you because it’s the new trendy subfield (I’ve gotten the same suggestions).

I think the other suggestions are good, and cover most of the heavily quantitative careers, except for the NSA since my impression is that they also do math research, or at least something fairly close. I could be wrong about this too.