Why Maths?
- What use is maths in every day life?
- Maths in nature
- Man made maths
- Maths helping our lives
- What use is maths in studying?
- Maths for general skills
- Maths for transferable skills
- Engineering
- Economics
- Medicine
- Archaeology
- Statistical consultant and data analysis
- Computer games designer and IT
- Medical statistician and medical research
- Audio software engineer and digital signal processing
- Meteorologist and climate prediction
- Racecar designer and aerodynamics
- Actuary and financial mathematics
- Avalanche researcher and fluid dynamics
- And best of all!
- What use is maths, in getting a job?
- Why take a maths-based degree?
- Many career paths
- In Conclusion
What use is maths in every day life?
Maths is an application that surrounds us and is part of almost everything we do, touch and feel.
It underlies every process and pattern that occurs in the world and having a good understanding of it will help enormously in everyday life.
Being quick at mental arithmetic will save you hundreds in the supermarket, a knowledge of statistics will help you see through the nonsense in the media, and it will help you even with your favourite activity e.g. understanding the torrent of information you'll hear about your local footy team.
Maths in nature
Simple maths equations are constantly turning up in our daily lives. Some examples are:
• The spherical symmetrical shape of a soap bubble;
• The gentle sag of the clothes line in the back garden;
• Ripples on the surface of a pond;
• The sun's path across the sky, or star trails around the Pole Star;
• Throwing cricket balls or water jetting out from a hosepipe.
Using the last example, every falling object follows a parabola—a quadratic equation that you learn in year 10/11. Interestingly, when you throw a ball, your brain is solving in milliseconds exactly the same equation for which the military gurus in the Second World War had books listing thousands of solutions!
Mathematical sequences can be discovered in the spiral of seeds on a sunflower, the fractal pattern of snowflakes or broccoli florets, the pattern of stripes on a zebra or the swirling of a hurricane.
Maths has been used to explain how we tie knots in our shoelaces, and why a knot could not be tied in four dimensions.
All kinds of music, from Classical to hip-hop, have a deep mathematical pattern to it. Some scientists believe that it is this very mathematical structure that our brains latch on to, which explains why we enjoy listening to music with a good rhythm or catchy tune. The same is probably true for the things we find visually beautiful, where mathematical .equations abound.
Man-made maths
Structural engineers make extensive use of maths when designing buildings. The strengths and forces must be carefully balanced, for everything from a small bungalow to the breath-taking feat of a skyscraper, or the 2km-long Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge in Japan, or the elegant domes of the Eden Project in Cornwall. Some are even designed to illustrate mathematical functions, such as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, USA. This stunning monument towers almost 200m above the Mississippi river, and was built to follow the catenary curve—the same curve made by a chain sagging under its own weight.
The communication satellites orbiting high over out heads that let us watch Cable/Satellite television channels or make phone calls to America are all governed by the intricacies of maths.
The action in video games, like a racing car accelerating round a corner, is only possible because the computer is solving hundreds of equations a second to simulate how the car should behave and what graphics to display on the screen.
The insurance we buy before going on holiday is calculated by mathematicians, and the modern drugs we take when we fall ill are only available because statistics have shown them to be effective and safe.
Maths helping our lives
Not only is the beauty of maths everywhere around us, but also having an understanding of it helps in day-to-day life. Have you ever been to the supermarket and not known whether it is cheaper to buy one kind of pasta, at 69c for 500 grams, or a 750-gram bag of another brand at $1.15? Being able to do some simple mental arithmetic would prevent you from being ripped off.
What use is studying maths?
Maths for general skills
The most fundamental skill that mathematics will equip you with is to able to learn and understand the basic principles (for example, starting from shapes, triangles and angles), to build upon this existing knowledge to developing further general concepts (Pythagoras' theorem, trigonometry), and then to apply these hypotheses to specific examples (solving specific geometric problems using the techniques of trigonometry).
Maths teaches you to think logically, to ask questions, and to do thorough and rigorous investigations to answer them.
As well as teaching you problem-solving and data-handling skills, mathematics is the language of most of the lab sciences and many of the quantitative parts of social sciences. It therefore enables you to communicate complicated concepts. These more skills will be useful, no matter what you want to do in the future.
But more importantly in addition to the acquisition of these general skills, you will need maths to study a wide range of subjects—from engineering to economics, medicine to archaeology.
Maths for transferable skills
Apart from these general transferable skills, maths also equips you with a set of tools that are vital in many jobs. Here is just a selection of the wide variety of careers that mathematics opens up.
Engineering
If you study engineering, maths forms the bases for most of the subjects. Whether you are doing civil, mechanical, and electrical or materials engineering, you will need to use geometry, calculus and algebra to work with mathematical formulae for physical forces, electrical currents and other phenomena.
For example, when studying civil engineering you will have to calculate the force distribution for different structures, such as truss bridges. This will involve a combination of trigonometry and solving the equations of forces on the bridge. On other occasions, you will need to use integration to calculate the centre of mass of an object, or to use differential equations to understand the flow of water through pipes.
Economics
Studying economics requires you not only be able to handle data and work with figures, but also to understand the concepts underlying economic questions. You will use maths to calculate compound interest, and arithmetic series to calculate growth of investments. You will need to use calculus to optimise cost and profit calculations, and to use these principles to express and analyse supply and demand problems.
Medicine
Medical students have to take courses in statistics, is critical in analysing today's medical knowledge. They need to critically interpret data, such as the results of trials of new medical practice, to judge the reliability of tests and to assess the risks of treatments.
Maths is also used in medical research, for modelling tumour growth and the effects of therapy, for planning treatment, and for understanding and interpreting medical scans.
Archaeology
Mathematics is even necessary in many of the non-lab sciences, such as psychology and archaeology. Archaeologists use a variety of mathematical and statistical techniques to present the data from archaeological surveys and to distinguish patterns in their results that shed light on past human behaviour. Statistical measures are used during excavation to monitor which pits are most successful and to decide on further excavation. Finds are analysed using statistical and numerical methods to find patterns in the way the archaeological record changes, both over time and geographically, within a site and across the country.
Statistical consultant and data analysis
You often hear about consultants being called in by government departments or business, but what do they actually do? Statistical and mathematical consultants use their training to solve problems in a wide range of areas, such as predicting future infrastructure requirements, improving manufacturing processes and using the large amounts of information now held by businesses to help them make better decisions.
Computer games designer and IT
Creating the virtual worlds and making the people that inhabit them behave, as we would expect involves a vast knowledge of maths.
The virtual landscapes and things within them are three-dimensional mathematical objects, and these objects behave and interact according to the equations for the rules of physics that apply within the game. These rules might cover gravity, speed and force, and even stop your character falling through a solid floor but allow them to sink in quicksand.
This type of mathematics is also used in computer graphics for movies.
Medical statistician and medical research
Medical statisticians design clinical trials of new drugs or medical treatments to judge whether they are effective. Statistics and mathematics are used throughout medical research to model tumour growth, to decide treatment dosages, to understand the spread of disease and to model the effects of illness and treatment on the human body.
Audio software engineer and digital signal processing
Most of today's music is produced using synthesisers and digital processors to correct pitch or add effects to the sound. These tools are created by audio software engineers who work out ways of manipulating the digital sound, by using a mathematical technique called Fourier analysis.
This is part of the area of digital signal processing (DSP) which has many other applications including speech recognition, image enhancement and data compression.
Meteorologist and climate prediction
Meteorologists use mathematics to model the factors that affect the weather to make short-term predictions. They also study how continuing climatic changes will influence our future environment and all living species.
Rather confusingly, this is part of an area of mathematics called fluid mechanics: in this case, the "fluid" is the atmosphere. "Partial differential equations" are used to model the flow of fluid and to find patterns governing its behaviour.
Racecar designer and aerodynamics
To make a car go faster you need to improve its aerodynamics, and this requires mathematics to describe the motion of the air as the car drives through it, and how that motion affects the car's performance. This area of mathematics is also used to understand flight and can even improve sporting performance.
Actuary and financial mathematics
Actuaries use maths and statistics to make financial sense of the future. For example, if an organisation is embarking on a large project, an actuary may analyse the project, assess the financial risks involved, model the future financial outcomes and advise the organisation on the decisions to be made. Much of their work is on pensions, ensuring funds stay solvent long into the future, when current workers have retired. They also work in insurance, setting premiums to match liabilities.
Mathematics is also used in many other areas of finance, from banking and trading in equities, to producing economic forecasts and developing government financial policies.
Avalanche researcher and fluid dynamics
Understanding the conditions that result in avalanches, and developing ways to predict when they might occur, uses an area of maths called fluid mechanics.
This is one of the most widely applied areas of mathematics, and is also used in understanding volcanic eruptions, flight, ocean currents and even the stock market.
And best of all!
And, obviously, if you want to go on to study the subject of mathematics itself, all the maths you have done in the past will play its part.
If you enjoy and even love studying mathematics, then this is the best possible start to doing well in your studies. Even if you don’t feel positive towards the subject, building up your mathematical toolbox is bound to come in handy in the future, regardless of what you intend to study.
What use is maths in getting a job?
Look closer at the job ads and at the kinds of skills employers are looking for:
Problem solving skills,
Conceptual and analytical ability,
Data handling and communication skills.
These are transferable skills that are useful in any job, and you can get all of them from studying mathematics.
As well as problem solving and logical thinking, maths enables you to communicate complicated ideas in a clear and unambiguous way.
Maths is the language used in science, business and many other areas to express complex situations, from analysing costs versus profits to pulling together all the factors affecting whether a structure will stay up. Maths teaches you to handle and interpret data, and ultimately teaches you how research—how to do a thorough investigation.
Why take advantage of a maths based degree?
Maths graduates earn more!
A wide range of career options also means a chance to earn more money: a recent study, conducted by economists at the University of Swansea, showed that maths and computing degrees make the biggest difference to lifetime earnings. On average, a graduate of any degree can expect to earn £149,760 more in his or her lifetime than a person leaving education with two A levels. For maths and computing graduates, this figure rises to £225,179!
Many career paths!
With the knowledge of maths or statistics, you can move into a wide variety of jobs, from oceanographer to weather forecaster on TV.
These fields are by no means the only routes that can be taken. In fact, you'd be surprised at the great diversity of jobs that are open to mathematicians; from developing computer games to studying climate change to working with a Formula One racing team on aerodynamics.
In conclusion
All the potential jobs featured on this page use maths, but few of them have the words “mathematics” or “statistics” in their titles.
No matter what job you go into, you'll soon realise it would be surprising if you didn't find yourself using maths, rather than the other way around!
The examples above are just a few of the many careers that mathematics can lead to and through the constant integration of Maths and the applied principles of maths it will teach one to :
- Think
- Analyse
- Postulate
- Generate a solution
- Tests the solution
Thus, these skills will ultimately give the individual the aptitude and competence to stand out amongst the crowd and be noticed, the skills to analyse a situation and take advantage of opportunity wherever it presents itself.
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