There are many reasons for studying mathematics, at school and college. Everyday practical use being a big one, or maybe just the sheer joy of the logic, if you’re that way inclined. (And below, a fascinating TED talk about what we can learn from health statistics.)
But here’s another good reason: because, in a few years, mathematics is where the jobs will be. We just don’t know what those jobs will be.
Mathematics is where the jobs will be
Back in 1995, I had a lovely radio series with RTE, looking at what life would be like in a quarter century’s time, and called appropriately 2020 Vision. One contributor — if memory serves me, ‘futurologist’ Gerard O’Neill, now with Amárach Research — said that children at school in 1995 would go on to have jobs and careers that hadn’t even been invented then.
Sure enough: my radio producer’s son, then at school, went on to study bio-informatics, not something that had been on the career guidance list at the time.
So what careers await today’s school students? One thing is sure, mathematics will be central. Because the future is in data, and in data mining.
Just consider, the enormous amount of data accumulating on a daily basis now, across all disciplines, from DNA sequences to twitter tweets.
If we are to make sense of all this data, then we will need people with mathematical skills who can extract meaning from the mess, and make sense of the noise.
Consider: the many tens of thousands of tweets that circulated last summer sparked by the Iranian elections and riots in Tehran. But when analysed, those tweets, according to venture capitalist David Blumenstein, speaking at Innovate Media 09 last December, actually came from just five sources.
Not so much news, then, as mostly noise.
(The news:noise ratio is something journalist Mark Little is beginning to explore for Irish media, albeit in a different way:
Meanwhile, reams and reams of data are accumulating, even as I write this, and you read it.
(You know I never knew why we call it Information Technology, when really it should be Data Technology.)
And if the future will be mathematical, then it’s even more important that we in Ireland improve our mathematical ability. As Dr Craig Barrett, former Intel chairman and “the man credited with bringing Intel to Ireland over 20 years ago” said, earlier this week in an address to the Royal Irish Academy: Ireland is now distinctly average, and average is not good enough.
There have of course been numerous reports, taskforces and conferences addressing the problem in recent years, and especially the falloff in student interest in mathematics and science subjects at school and third-level. (Here is Engineers Ireland president, Chris Horn, on the topic – and even mining some economic data, here.)
Just this week, Engineers Ireland launched a survey of mathematics teaching. Among other things, most people believe mathematics teaching will improve if maths teachers are obliged to have a degree in mathematics. Tellingly, however, most people also believe that these maths teachers should not be paid a premium.
But will a mathematics degree necessarily produce a better teacher? And will we not need those mathematicians in industry and business?
Myself, I believe the answer lies in incentivising, not the teachers, but the students. Make it worth their while, and they will follow. But that argument is for another day.
Meanwhile, I leave you with this fascinating TED talk on the information that can be mined from international health statistics, given by Swedish professor, Hans Rosling.
Rosling invented Trendalyzer, a powerful software tool that allows people to compare and contrast large volumes of data with animated charts, as you’ll see in his talk.
And see if you can you pass his pre-health test? Pause, and try . . . and see if you’re better than the chimps and Karolinska profs.
[...] From Mary Mulvihill: [...]