<p>I honestly would rather do pure math because I personally find it more interesting but I’m hesitant because I’m not sure the demand for math majors is as great as Engineering majors. How in demand are math majors and what exactly do math majors even do…? Engineering does not sound all that exciting to me but I guess I will have to settle for it because it is the only safe major.</p>
<p>What grade are you in ? Don’t you have someone at school to discuss this with ? Talk to a Math teacher about possibilities .</p>
<p>You may want to look at the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html</a> . Berkeley, Virginia Tech, Cal Poly SLO, MIT, and CMU have fairly detailed career surveys by major.</p>
<p>If you are willing to work in finance or actuarial fields, you can do pure math as a major, but supplement it with applied math, statistics, and finance/economics courses to have some additional options if you eventually decide not to go for a PhD and mathematical research or faculty positions at four year schools.</p>
<p>Other subjects that you can supplement a pure math major with courses or a minor (or even a second major) in could include computer science and operations research, if you find those backup options to be more interesting than finance or actuarial work.</p>
<p>Another obvious option is to teach math in high school or community college.</p>
<p>Math changes once you get to a higher up level eg: post calculus. so I would do engineerig and minor in math. There really aren’t that many jobs for math majors compared to engineering</p>
<p>NEVER “settle” for a safe major. You are just asking for 1) a low GPA 2) a bad college experience 3) a mind-numbingly boring job (even if it pays well).</p>
<p>If you really like pure math, then major in it. There are plenty of jobs you can get.
You can get jobs in finance, academia, and management consulting.
If you want to expand your career options, taking 3-4 core CS or core engineering classes (or getting a minor in those fields) will open you up to jobs in computer software or engineering, respectively.</p>
<p>I agree with ilovemydog2</p>
<p>There’s some nice math jobs in the financial sector, if you’re good enough. University work is also good.</p>
<p>If you would rather do pure math, then do pure math. As terence said, never settle for a safe major. I am an old guy (relatively that is) and my parents always preached doing things safe and having something to fall back on. I have been in accounting and engineering and today I would be very happy today if I could be teaching math in a high school. As a matter of fact, one of my projects for this summer is to study for alternative teacher certification in math.</p>
<p>There are actually lots of applications of pure math areas in engineering and ndustry, for which having a math major is almost essential. </p>
<p>Finance is the one most people know about. Financial models typically use lots of measure theory and real analysis, so a math major (or most of the time, a PhD) is actually necessary to work there.</p>
<p>Computer science has lots of applications of pure math in the R&D areas. There’s some fancy geometic/topological approaches to computer vision. There’s people working on computational complexity theory using algebraic geometry. Machine learning research involves the obvious probability/statistics/linear algebra as well as things like matrix analysis. </p>
<p>Robotics also attracts lots of mathematicians. A basic idea is that you can treat the positions of a robot as points in topological spaces using product structure for different motors/joints/etc. and quotient maps for components which interact with each other, and then study how to control robots that way. In fact robotics and algorithms are two fields that really like mathematicians, since in both fields being able to prove that your robot or algorithm works correctly is essential. Imagine trying to get a robot to disarm a nuclear device. Well you can’t really use trial and error to make sure it works correctly.</p>
<p>And then there’s various things like cryptography and quantum computing that are still hot research areas.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in physics, a lot of physics uses grad level math. Quantum mechanics can be formulated using measure theory, differential topology pops up even in basic electromagnetism, string theory uses lots of algebraic topology, etc.</p>
<p>So yea, basically if you keep an eye on other areas, you can easily focus on a math major or PhD and still get a good job.</p>
<p>The other areas of engineering (mechanical, chemical, electrical, etc.) are less friendly since they mostly use 200-year-old math and physics. But there might be cool things I’m not aware of, I haven’t really looked at those areas.</p>
<p>There is so much overlap between math and physics and most kinds of engineering. You don’t have to make this decision right away because the first year will be very much the same no matter what you ultimately choose–freshman English, calculus, other stuff–it’s only until at least year two that the majors (math, physics, engineering) start differentiating themselves. Even then there’s a lot of overlap. I’m an engineering physics major, I take a lot of math. Sit tight, make up your mind later. I changed my mind about my own major after starting, originally I was going to be Comp.Eng.</p>
<p>Actually, the kind of math most physics/engineering students take in their freshman year is not what something interested in pure math should be taking. While you don’t need to take more than one or two pure math courses per semester as a freshman, you should start then.</p>
<p>“Actually, the kind of math most physics/engineering students take in their freshman year is not what something interested in pure math should be taking. While you don’t need to take more than one or two pure math courses per semester as a freshman, you should start then.”</p>
<p>Except that getting through calculus 1, 2, 3 and diff eq are required for virtually all math and engineering programs and are generally prerequisites for most higher-level math classes.</p>
<p>You say that “engineering does not sound all that exciting” to you. Listen to what you said. Perhaps you don’t really have a good grasp of what various kinds of engineers do or what goes on in engineering research. You should try to explore it by involving yourself with engineering programs for high school students. Look on the website for the NSPE (national society of professional engineers) or your state branch of that organization. They do lots of things to help high school students, who have very little practical knowledge, to understand what engineering offers.</p>
<p>On a different note, it is always much easier to transfer from engineering to math than to transfer from a math major into an engineering program. Check that out with an admissions counselor at a few colleges you are considering. If you are starting out in any calculus course, I would go with engineering first. Should you decide to transfer to math, you will not have lost any time.</p>
<p>@geo: have you even ever taken an upper level math class?</p>
<p>As far as undergraduate courses are concerned, abstract algebra and real analysis have no formal prerequisites beyond experience with proofs and basic high school material. Depending on your particular school, these classes might require some linear algebra or might teach you linear algebra. In either case, calculus classes don’t teach linear algebra properly anyway. Differential equations will only show up in a differential geometry class as an undergraduate in things like showing uniqueness of curves, and even then you only need a few basic results that will take at most a week to learn on your own. Complex analysis and topology usually just require real analysis, or not even that. PDEs are like the only undergraduate course that may require calculus background.</p>
<p>So yea, please enlighten me as to why calculus 1,2,3 and diff eq are generally prerequisites for higher-level math. </p>
<p>The calculus sequence is designed to gather all the math necessary for engineers into one sequence. It has no relevance whatsoever to a math major.</p>
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<p>Well…real analysis and advanced calculus (which was “real analysis light” at my undergrad school) is basically the theoretical topics of Calculus I & II, so you would need Calculus I & II to take a real analysis course. No way one could go from high-school pre-calculus and take a junior-level analysis course.</p>
<p>Also prerequisites are established not ONLY for prior background material but also for mathematical maturity. Using a sports analogy, yeah a high-school football player COULD play in the NFL but it would not be advised…which is why the NFL requires 3 years of college football.</p>
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<p>Don’t confuse liking a subject with wanting to pursue it as a career. This is a common mistake I see on CC time-after-time. You really need to learn more about what options you would have with both degrees. Several have mentioned teaching: is that really what you want to do? Are you interested in covering the same material year-after-year with many less than entusiastic students? If you go the PS teaching route, will you be okay with being wedded to one school district for 20 years?</p>
<p>Both math and engineering have good career options. Engineerers tend to work on interesting assignments and for interesting companies. Math majors have options in finance, stats, etc. Check with your school’s placement office and connect with recent grads to learn more.</p>
<p>@LakeCloud, LakeClouds, I like and rather. Several people have pointed out several career options (not only teaching) to the OP.</p>
<p>You don’t develop mathematical maturity from calculus courses. To use your analogy, that’s like saying, I’m going to train for the NFL by practicing football with my high school team.</p>
<p>A first course in real analysis is meant to develop your mathematical maturity. You should take it sophomore year at the latest. If you have some proof experience already, then you can start with it freshman year. If not, take a course using Apostle or Spivak your freshman year.</p>
<p>As for the calculus material, if the OP is interested in math/engineering he’s probably done calculus in high school, and you don’t need anything beyond that for real analysis. Sure, there’s vector analysis and differential forms in the second semester of real analysis, but having seen vector calculus beforehand is not needed at all.</p>
<p>Calculus is pretty fundamental to math. My school’s Real Analysis course requires some calculus-requiring prereqs, and in general calculus is useful because of its applications to a lot of things, including pure math.
Maybe not many calculus courses, but I+II are pretty much fundamental to all higher math.</p>
<p>"So yea, please enlighten me as to why calculus 1,2,3 and diff eq are generally prerequisites for higher-level math. "</p>
<p>feurfollets, what math I have taken has nothing to do with the my answer. However, since you want to be enlightened, please feel free to read the math prerequisites for upper level math classes at Penn. For example, Complex analysis requires calc 3 as a prereq and diff eq is part of the course description for calc 3 at Penn. If you want to discuss what you need to know to do real analysis (some of which I had to learn in some advanced economics classes) or topology (I wrote a paper on topology 100 years ago when I was in high school before i took calculus), I think you make some valid points. However, I wanted to point out to the OP that there are prerequisites that a univeristy will require before s/he can enroll in those classes.</p>