Fewer people studying advanced maths.

[Slumdawg]

3. Statistician --- Very little maths involved. Just spend 99% of your time collecting information, type it in to microsoft excel and get it to draw a fancy picture for you.

although i'm not that much of a fan of stats myself but i can tell u that's very very wrong as well lol

I completely agree. After doing a horrific unit of statistics this year at uni I can definitely see why the statistics department is in the same building as the maths. The majority of statistics that I did involved using retarded formulas, so there's actually a lot of maths involved.

[Planck's constant]

2. Engineer --- Shouldn't require much more than year 10 maths.

Mate, you have just offended my dad
I read him your comment and he said (well, I wont say exactly what he said but he pointed to the bookshelf and he said 'have a look at my undergrad engineering maths books over there'

So, here I am with 'Foundations of Applied Mathematics' by Michael D. Greenberg in front of me and I am looking through the contents ..

Interchange of Limit Processes and the Delta Function
Fourier and Laplace Transforms
The Calculus of Variations
Partial Differential equations

... and then it gets really esoteric



.
 

[taiga]

Smells like a troll

[paulsterio]

Smells like a troll

I'm jealous of cats and their supersensitive sense of smell :S

[Planck's constant]

The old man says that there was a significant maths content in a B.Engineering degree



.

[xZero]

The problem is that there are heaps of jobs out there which require mathematicians but their job title isn't labelled exactly as "mathematician" and that is the obscurity and the driving force for people to shy away from maths....  What the hell and where the hell are mathematicians working?

Good question. What do mathematicians do?
All I can think of is:
1. Teacher --- Any subject can become one.
2. Engineer --- Shouldn't require much more than year 10 maths. I mean seriously, how hard is it to determine the rate of flow of water in a pipe, or the downward force of a rectangular skyscraper?
3. Statistician --- Very little maths involved. Just spend 99% of your time collecting information, type it in to microsoft excel and get it to draw a fancy picture for you.

2 and 3... yeh coz basic trigonometry and pythagoras theorem are all we need to build a jet engine. As for stats, you prob haven't seen any of those "wtf" equations. Mate you should crawl out of that little hole of yours and see the real world

[JellyDonut]

Mathematicians will eventually be replaced by robots. For now, we need them to design the robots to replace them.

[TrueTears]

i'd like to see a robot with the mind of wiles's and prove FTL XD

[ArchieMae]

Wow people can get pretty mean here.

We (ie: the users who, for example, have fathers as engineers or have studied statistics in the "real world") should be educating the students who do not have such experiences yet, not putting them down so frankly.

SpecialAtSpecialist probably has a heap of mathematical talent and future aspirations for doing math at uni level. However, as long as there's people around to shun his thoughts about math (though they are wrong, he did specify that they were thoughts), this can only cripple his motivation to not only contribute to mathematical discourse here, but to indeed continue with mathematics at all.

At this point in my rant you should glance at the title of this thread and realise that the many criticisms posted above are counter-productive in achieving what those who've clicked on this thread want to see be achieved: A more positive portrayal of mathematics and more support given to those with an interest in the subject.

I sincerely hope SpecialAtSpecialist continues with math at university to experience first-hand the immense importance and beauty in the work of engineers, statisticians and mathematicians.

[JellyDonut]

i'd like to see a robot with the mind of wiles's and prove FTL XD

In due time my friend.

[TrueTears]

i'd like to see a robot with the mind of wiles's and prove FTL XD

In due time my friend.

lolol i'm betting the japs to roll out the first robot mathematician xD

[kamil9876]

Actually, some people are keen on building computers that do math, prove theorems etc.

e.g Zeilberger has made Shalosh B. Ekhad, who has published some papers 

http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/pj.html

[funkyducky]

I better not show that article to my brother - he is adamant that the only reason he got a 42 in Methods and a 98.35 ATAR and I got a 50 in Methods and am looking at a 99+ ATAR is because this generation is dumber than the last. (To be fair, he's just as intelligent as me if not more - just damn lazy)

EDIT: Mathematicians can never be replaced by robots, because true mathematical thinking is creativity, ingenuity and innovation - how do you come up with theorems if you haven't a creative brain to imagine the possibilities? Maths is an art - to borrow an analogy from a mathematician friend of mine, take two kids who are playing piano at a prestigious competition. The first follows the sheet music note for note, reproducing perfectly the tone, timbre, dynamics and playing a flawless rendition of *insert masterpiece here*. But he/she sees nothing more than notes on a page, a set of instructions, that corresponds to a key on the piano. He hears the music, but he isn't really listening. On the other hand, player no. 2 follows the sheet music and feels it, thinking "wow, that's beautiful phrasing", really letting the emotions of the piece shine through. They're a little bit sloppy and make a mistake here or there, but that doesn't matter - they're making beautiful music.

In case you couldn't figure it out, the first player is like the robot/computer/calculator. It can do the maths, but it can't create. The second player is a true musician; this is how maths feels in the mind of a true mathematician.

[EvangelionZeta]

I better not show that article to my brother - he is adamant that the only reason he got a 42 in Methods and a 98.35 ATAR and I got a 50 in Methods and am looking at a 99+ ATAR is because this generation is dumber than the last. (To be fair, he's just as intelligent as me if not more - just damn lazy)

EDIT: Mathematicians can never be replaced by robots, because true mathematical thinking is creativity, ingenuity and innovation - how do you come up with theorems if you haven't a creative brain to imagine the possibilities? Maths is an art - to borrow an analogy from a mathematician friend of mine, take two kids who are playing piano at a prestigious competition. The first follows the sheet music note for note, reproducing perfectly the tone, timbre, dynamics and playing a flawless rendition of *insert masterpiece here*. But he/she sees nothing more than notes on a page, a set of instructions, that corresponds to a key on the piano. He hears the music, but he isn't really listening. On the other hand, player no. 2 follows the sheet music and feels it, thinking "wow, that's beautiful phrasing", really letting the emotions of the piece shine through. They're a little bit sloppy and make a mistake here or there, but that doesn't matter - they're making beautiful music.

In case you couldn't figure it out, the first player is like the robot/computer/calculator. It can do the maths, but it can't create. The second player is a true musician; this is how maths feels in the mind of a true mathematician.

Your brother sounds like irritating company.  :p  </offensive>

And you never know with the way AI is going - what's to suggest we don't have a race of sentient robots who possess just as much creativity as human beings?  </doomsday scenario draws nearer and nearer> 

[funkyducky]

^ in my brother's defence, he's genuinely the best brother ever though, he's never been mean and always looks out for me. The truth is, he's so smart that he never had to try at all to do well (in year 5, he got the highest score in the state in the unsw English comp, having come to Australia as a 4 yo with zero English and gone to an average public school). All those years of not trying at all left him complacent with vce. He got a 98 atar and passed w/ honours a degree that 70% of his cohort dropped out of, all with zero effort. /mybrotherissmarterthanme