Remember long division?
Maintaining your math skills is important—especially for those in non-scientific disciplines
MATH CLASS IN high school wasn’t always a walk in the park. Even for those who excelled at it, many students leave math behind with their secondary education and they never look back. However, with employers and graduate schools seeking well-rounded and multi-talented candidates, refreshing your math skills can come in handy for more than simply calculating how much to tip the bartender without using your cell phone.
“The best reason to study mathematics is, by far, the reasoning skills that such study develops,” says Alistair Savage, associate professor of geometric and combinatorial representation theory at the U of O. “We are constantly bombarded with fallacious reasoning in advertising and political arguments.”
The study of mathematics can help people learn to break down an argument to determine whether or not it is valid, according to Savage. Learning to recognize patterns and common argumentative structures in daily discourse gets easier with practice, and math helps break down these patterns into recognizable forms.
“Making solid arguments is something that many people need to do in their everyday lives,” says Savage. “When making a presentation at work, for example. One of the best ways to develop these skills is to study mathematics—even if the particular topics of the argument differ from those you encounter in other aspects of life.”
Savage has always been interested in rational argument, philosophy, and how the world works at a fundamental level. It was these passions that led him to pursue studies in representation theory. Far from being an endless series of formulas to memorize—as many students are taught in high school—math is fundamentally about using pure reason to make deep deductions and rigorous rational arguments. This spirit of curiosity and interest in critical inquiry resonates across many fields of study—arts, humanities, and other non-scientific programs included.
“I love the interplay between math and other disciplines,” says Robert Smith?, who teaches the mathematical modeling of infectious diseases at the U of O. Smith? is best known to non-mathematicians for his work on a recent paper concerning the best way to deal with a zombie outbreak. And yes, there is a question mark at the end of his surname. “Mathematics is like a language. It has its own syntax and, like any language, is can be used for simple communication or it can be used to create poetry.”
Smith? works to understand how diseases function and how they interact with society. He is extremely interested in questions surrounding the role of race, gender, and sexuality as they pertain to how society responds to something frightening such as a disease.
“My math skills are the axis around which all these questions revolve,” says Smith?. “They give me the ability to think clearly and systematically, even when I'm not actually doing math.”
Although math isn’t often pitched to students outside the discipline, it has the power to appeal to a much wider audience than that which it often enjoys. This is part of the reasoning behind the recent efforts to offer more courses targeted at students with a less thorough mathematical background—students who stopped studying math after high school or never took calculus, for example. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the U of O has introduced several new courses designed to showcase the fun and usefulness of mathematics.
“Numeracy is like literacy,” says David McDonald, professor of applied probability and director of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the U of O. “Beyond this it becomes a matter of culture. Mathematical arguments created thousands of years ago remain as bright and hard as diamond; they last forever. Mathematics are one of the greatest achievements of human culture and should be enjoyed by as many as possible.”
MAT1374, also known as “Poker 101,” is a course on probability intended specifically for students with minimal mathematical background. It has attracted 150 students so far, but registration is still open for those interested. The professor teaching the class, Pieter Hofstra, is not only a specialist in categorical logic but also a poker expert who plays for cash. Courses like MAT1330 and MAT1332 mix calculus with applied problems in biology. This means ecosystems, predators, diseases, and even zombies. And the list goes on. Though there are few obvious means for the department to make contact with non-math students, many of the professors are eager to communicate, adapt what classes they offer, and share what they know.
“Few professionals have ‘Mathematician’ written on their office door,” says Monica Nevins, professor and associate director of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the U of O. “This might be why people don’t always consider studying math to be a great career choice. It’s got a stigma similar to studying English, I think. People ask, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ But in reality you can do a great deal.”
Statisticians, cryptographers, economists, computer scientists, and geographers often have a mathematics background, and analysts of all stripes are very employable in today’s tough economy. Regardless of whether you wish to pursue any of these lines of work, learning to flex your brain muscles in a different way and examine issues from a mathematical perspective is useful for writing essays, making interesting conversation, and thinking critically about the world around you. But the bottom line, according to Nevins, is that math is enjoyable simply from a research perspective.
“I like digging out patterns and solving puzzles,” says Nevins. “As useful as math can be in practical terms, I study it because it is, in my opinion, the most beautiful way of examining the world.”