1. What can I do with a math major?
Acknowledgements: Jonathan Adler
PIC Math – Brigham Young University

2. “‘mathematician’ returned zero results”
When searching for my first job, there were zero jobs labelled “mathematician”
Lots of jobs would take math majors
“If they’re hiring math majors, that must mean I’ll be doing math! Let’s see how it goes!”
“‘mathematician’ returned zero results”

3. Vistaprint Vistaprint sells custom printed business cards online
Job description: maintain the statistical models used to forecast the business
What that meant…
Vistaprint
Press the button in SAS once a month that spits out the forecast.
Paste the results into excel and make charts
Paste the charts into Powerpoint.

4. Lesson: Difference between “Math” and “mathy”
Proving theorems
Developing new methods
Finding new applications for existing methods
Using existing methods in conventional ways
Manipulating data in interesting ways
Manipulating data in Excel
Manipulating charts in PowerPoint
Pressing the button that needs to be pressed
Going to meetings
Every math undergrad thinks they will end up here
“Math” work
Interesting jobs for math grad students fall here
Interesting jobs for math undergrads fall here
“mathy” work
Vistaprint job
most jobs for math undergrads fall here
Office work

5. Lesson: Difference between “Math” and “mathy”
Job titles
Lesson: Difference between “Math” and “mathy”
Proving theorems
Developing new methods
Finding new applications for existing methods
Using existing methods in conventional ways
Manipulating data in interesting ways
Manipulating data in Excel
Manipulating charts in PowerPoint
Pressing the button that needs to be pressed
Going to meetings
Researcher
“Math” work
Scientist
Machine learning expert/
Data scientist/
Statistician/
Operations researcher
“mathy” work
Analytics
Analyst
Office work
Associate

6. Lesson: Difference between “Math” and “mathy”
Nothing “wrong” with being lower on the ladder
Just because it isn’t “Math” doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting and a good brain workout
Way more jobs lower on the ladder
Too high up and your stuff doesn’t get used
You can move up the ladder
Find a new area to do something mathematical
Improve a current process with clever tricks
Automate a process that is boring
Lesson: Difference between “Math” and “mathy”

7. Problem:
Vistaprint had data on revenue for every order for the past few years
On a recent Tuesday had a bug which went undetected and lowered sales dramatically
A director ed my department and asked for history of sales over all Tuesdays, was going to take the average of that and if you’re below it you can tell there is a bug
Options:
Run a SQL query to get the data and it to him
Point out it’s a much more complicated and interesting problem
Sales are increasing over time
Only interested in sudden drops
How do you correctly determine how low is “too low?”
What if you want to detect it more quickly than that?
Example

8. Lesson: Skills you should get before leaving school
To be decent in industry you need to know
Basic databases (intro database course)
Everyone stores their data in SQL (or equivalent)
Since industry mathematics is all based on data, you need to be able to manipulate it
Basic programming (intro programming course)
Don’t have to be a CS wizard, but do need to be able to understand loops, functions, and the simple stuff
Language isn’t a big deal (ex: MATLAB is okay), but need to be able to do more than just run built in functions
Basic statistics (intro statistics)
Everything has uncertainty
Need to be able to understand how the uncertainty of the data will affect your results
Unfortunately assumptions from class never hold, so get really to roll with it
Other knowledge will help (ex: linear programming)
Lesson: Skills you should get before leaving school

9. Lesson: Skills you should get before leaving school
To be excellent in industry you need
Everything from the previous list
The ability to learn more things
Lesson: Skills you should get before leaving school

10. 1. Given a sequence of numbers taken by sampling something at a constant interval, predict the next numbers in the sequence.
3 math problems I never saw in school but show up all the time in industry

11. 2. Say you are running a major online store and a customer is currently using your website. Before they check out, you get the chance to show them one more product. Use math to figure out which product to show them.
3 math problems I never saw in school but show up all the time in industry

12. 3. Given a set of data, partition it into related groups
3 math problems I never saw in school but show up all the time in industry
Math Majors
Standard Population