Talame wrote:WOOT! Maths shall rule the world!!!
Just a question though... does studying maths in uni give you a good job at the end? I'm studying finance, which has ALOT of maths but it is all applied to real life situations such as the stock market and such.
It can, it depends on how you apply it and what you've studied. What you're doing, financial mathematics certainly does have a practical application and can get quite sophisticated. I'm a bit tempted myself to sit in on some of their lectures covering stochastic calculus, which has some applications in signal processing and physical modelling, but is not currently taught within my department.
I've often been struck with the fact that as an engineer, you can never know too much mathematics. Subjects that may have been relatively esoteric several years ago for instance are beginning to have applications as we delve into ever more sophisticated problems in science and engineering. I mentioned stochastic calculus as one area but there are several more. For example, wavelet theory, information theory, and so on.
By way of example, you may wish to ponder the following subjects of current importance to industry:
Optimization theory
Numerical Modelling of partial differential equations (used pretty much everywhere).
Statistical methods in signal and image processing
Computational modelling in chemistry
Inverse Problems (e.g. medical tomography, geophysics, etc)
Number theory (cryptology)
Also, for those finance people:
http://www.math.mcmaster.ca/phimac/
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.
Neil Postman
(The End of Education)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge
Isaac Aasimov