Advice about Applied Math

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Skyline-7

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Feb 27, 2017
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I'm really interested to study Applied Maths, could you give me any suggestion or advice on what should I pay attention during the studies? Also I would like to give me your opinion about the program (it's 4 year) that I would enroll in - would it give me good enough base for employment and possible Masters degree later on? Thanks.

Here's the prog.(by years):

I
-Analysis 1
-Linear algebra
-Geometry 1
-Introduction to mathematical logic
-Programming 1-1
-Programming 1-2
II
-Analysis 2
-Algebra 1
-Geometry 2
-Geometry 3
-Discrete mathematics
-Introduction to Numerical Mathematics
-Introduction to computer organization and architecture 1
-Object-Oriented Programming
-Web programming
III
-Analysis 3-1
-Analysis 3-2
-Algebra 2
-Geometry 4
-Differential equations 1-1
-Differential equations 1-2
-Numerical Analysis 1-1
-Numerical Analysis 1-2
-Complex functions
-Introduction to the theory of extremal problems
-Introduction to relational databases
IV
-Probability and Statistics 1-1
-Probability and Statistics 1-2
-Numerical analysis 2-1
-Numerical analysis 2-2
-Calculus of variations
-Methods of mathematical programming
-Basics of mathematical modeling
-Introduction to Theoretical Mechanics
-The equations of mathematical physics
-Teaching Mathematics and Computing

and several elective courses in last year:
-Partial equations
-Game Theory with Applications
-Operations research
-Database Programming
 
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would it give me good enough base for employment and possible Masters degree later on?
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Employment in what?

Anyone can jump into a masters.. so.. sure.
 
Networking? Where abouts is that in your schedule there? To know telecom you need actual info on telecom.

Not to mention medicine/biotech is a whole different field than networking... well unless you want to do networking as a career and just happen to get into a hospital's support staff... which, then, makes small sense why you would say those first and not just 'networking and comms'.
 
modi123 said:
Networking? Where abouts is that in your schedule there? To know telecom you need actual info on telecom.

Not to mention medicine/biotech is a whole different field than networking... well unless you want to do networking as a career and just happen to get into a hospital's support staff... which, then, makes small sense why you would say those first and not just 'networking and comms'.
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I just thought about networking like a backup, the first thing that came to my mind was the field of medicine.

modi123 said:
Networking? Where abouts is that in your schedule there? To know telecom you need actual info on telecom.

Not to mention medicine/biotech is a whole different field than networking.
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Anything that can relate to it in any way that I see are databases.

That's why I asked in the first place because I wanted to know is this good for a job that revolves around using math knowledge in medicine or pharmacy ( that's my wish anyway) and if not in what fields could I find a job with this kind of knowledge (because math is something that I really love)?
 
modi123 said:
I am still lost. Do you want to be in medicine as a practitioner, computers, or math?

There are plenty of job options out there.
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/what-can-i-do-with-my-degree/mathematics
http://www.onedayonejob.com/majors/mathematics/
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As for medicine - math to be involved.

Thanks for the links, I've got a clearer picture and made a short list of what I could do (maybe it's still a bit long):

Statistician
Operational researcher
Data analyst
Research scientist (maths)
Logistics
Market-research
Quantity surveyor
Meteorologist

The first 4 or 5 make the most sense to think about in the future.
 
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Ok... So which of those interests you most? In my experience, I degree is useless unless you know what you're interested in pursuing. Choose a path and begin specializing as those can be wildly different even from a technical/educational perspective.
 
pixelbaker said:
Ok... So which of those interests you most? In my experience, I degree is useless unless you know what you're interested in pursuing. Choose a path and begin specializing as those can be wildly different even from a technical/educational perspective.
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Statistician & Data analyst, they are sort of similar - I would give advantage to Statistician for sure. When you say to choose a path, do you mean graduate studies and beyond or deepening & broadening knowledge outside the boundaries of the plan or program in the context of what I will learn?
 
Skyline-7 said:
Statistician & Data analyst, they are sort of similar - I would give advantage to Statistician for sure. When you say to choose a path, do you mean graduate studies and beyond or deepening & broadening knowledge outside the boundaries of the plan or program in the context of what I will learn?
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You can always begin learning outside a formal education. That will put you in a much better place when you're looking for employment after school. I would do both, but knowing what you're truly interested in the key.
 
Skyline-7 said:
Could you give an example?...



Then that "knowledge" must have an big influence when choosing electives, doesn't it?
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I would start by checking out job boards for job descriptions that match what you think would be interesting. Look at the skills and tasks that employers expect and desire. Begin learning as much as you can about those areas, tools, and job functions in your own time. Electives should be used to specialize your degree and will still end up being relatively broad. Get involved with any clubs or groups through your school to practice the skills that are directly applicable to your future career. Look for as much on-the-job training as you can find be it a full-time/part-time/internship position in the field. Coming out of school with a degree *and* some real applicable experience will vastly set you apart from other job candidates. You'll also have a much better grasp on what it actually means to work in the field.
 
Thanks for a very good advice, pixelbaker:). The first thing that comes to my mind is Python which can't be found anywhere in the program description and MySQL which is (there are c#, java, fortran, matematica, matlab & maple) and those two are very in demand. I think I will start from that and then find some internship like you said, but I don't think anybody will want me - at least not before I start going to 3-rd year of college.
 
If you want to do something with computers, get a CS degree. Just the base curriculum is 2 top level elective classes away from a minor in math, plus the added programming knowledge.

If you are looking at math only, you should have a pretty clear end goal of what you want to do, and tailor your classes around that.
 
Biznatch said:
If you want to do something with computers, get a CS degree. Just the base curriculum is 2 top level elective classes away from a minor in math, plus the added programming knowledge.

If you are looking at math only, you should have a pretty clear end goal of what you want to do, and tailor your classes around that.
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Agreed. Try and figure out what you want to do as soon as possible and aim for that track. Also try and see where the tech is headed to future proof yourself. AI/CyberSecurity are going to be big as time goes on.

I have a CS background. Been doing computer related work since I was 12. But somehow decided to get a BS in Sports Medicine just to branch out. So sure, I qualify for Dr school but I have no interest in doing that.

I'm considering going back to do a Master's in CS (AI/Machine Learning specialization) as that's what I'm currently working on anyways. The issue is, I have to go back and do quite a few classes to get into a Master's program as job experience doesn't count in a lot of academia. Don't make my mistake, research the field you're interested in, and make damn sure you want to devote time to it.

Knowing where you want to go will also help with picking the languages you'll want to get good with. Python is good for AI/Machine Learning/Machine Vision, where-as C is going to be good for hardware and Java/JS/PHP/Ruby will be good for backend (app) development.
 
Math was the intention from the start, I've wanted a bit more of programming knowledge like Biznatch mentioned, but there is another program direction on college that I want called 'Informatics' and there they teach artificial & computational intelligence, bioinformatics, geometric, parallel & text algorithms, Python & C++, discrete programming & cryptography and it has one 'problem' - for entry to that program there is a lot more competition, a lot more.

With the applied math program I could work in a job related to electrical or mechanical engineering to which I would be totally ok - I've forgot to mention before that there are also electives like Signal processing (Approximation theory, time & frequency domain, frequency & impulse response, FFT & wavelets), FEM & Combinatorial optimization with Graph theory.
Spidey329 you are totally right, I have to make a decision - very wise one, through some circumstances I met some people who have studied something that turned out not to be interested in and I know it's not the ideal situation because I will devote the next 4 or 5 years of my life to it, not to mention the time after.
 
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Skyline-7, for the classes and the outline you have there in math, there are many areas you could go into, especially dealing with computer science careers. That type of workload would definitely benefit in a career programming algorithms in government/commerical for encryption, analytics, and modeling/simulation. It could also lead to a career in programming physical/visual effects for movies/games. In the medical/science field, it could lead to a career developing algorithms to break down complex problems into easier chunks that could be processed in smaller streams.

Many different fields benefit greatly from gifted mathematicians who can program algorithms. You can find programmers a dime a dozen, but finding people who have strong math background and can translate that to code is nearly priceless. The world operates and interacts in complex problems. To properly simulate/model/emulate those kinda of processes it takes a bit of advanced math within complex algorithms. It is highly valued in most of the programs in my current division.

To be blunt, anyone can teach you programming/telecommunications, you can even learn that on your own, but learning and understanding advanced math is an extremely valuable skill. You mix that with an algorithms course or 2 and you will pretty much never be out of a job.
 
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