Geographers--how much of what kind of math do they do?

Factual Questions
1

The description of various careers in “geography” given above sounds intriguing to a person I know, but they are not certain, from the description given above, what kinds of mathematics one must learn in order to do that kind of work.

Are we talking arithmetic? Algebra? Calculus? Statistics? Does it depend heavily on the specific kind of work one does within the field?

The person I’m in discussion with is very good at logical reasoning, but has (or anyway, seems to have, as far as we can tell) dyscalculia combined with a pretty serious number-phobia. They’ve overcome the phobia to some extent in the last few years (believe it or not through the practice of minmaxing in online roleplaying games!) but they’re not by any means to a point where they’d feel comfortable going through a degree program that will include any serious math.

2

It really depends on what field of geography he would work in. I work in GIS – geographic information systems. Not only that, but on the programming side of GIS. So I use a lot of math, especially vector algebra and trig.

3

Human Factors Geography requires a solid knowledge of Statistics (and preferably knowledge of a stats software package like SAS/SPSS/STATISTICA).

Si

4

Spherical trigonometry, just for starters, I should think.

5

I am a human geographer who also works with data on land use and land cover and other, more “physical” things.

Math was always my weak link, from grade school to today. I don’t exactly have math “phobia”, but what comes more easily to many has always been a struggle for me. But at least I do appreciate what math offers (in my profession and beyond), and enjoy the minor victories of finally figuring certain (what many would consider simple) things out.

A few geographers get by – even thrive – with no math at all. These would be the most abstract human theorists. But 99 percent of human geographers, and 100 percent of physical ones (and almost all of both have some training in, and use of, the other), use some math, at least.

Statistics, for sure, is necessary. You don’t need to be an expert in matrix algebra or even multivariate analysis, but you’d better know how basic things like chi-squared and Pearson’s correlation work, and when you should use them. A bit of geography-soecific stats (clustering, spatial autocorrelation, etc.) is good to know about, too. Even if you just do more anthropologically-oriented work (including “political ecology”), you’re surely going to work with census data, questionnaire results, etc.

Then, there’s GIS, which is just a set of tools, nothing to be scared of (though anything with computers is frustrating sometimes). You don’t necessarily need much math skill for GIS, depending on your tasks. Some familiarity with logical syntax is helpful when making attribute-based queries. Many tasks are best done using raster cells of values, and then you are talking about math operations (simple sums, Euclidean allocation, etc.), bit I didn’t find this to be too difficult to grasp, even though, again, anything math related is a struggle for me.

In sum, if you truly cannot imagine dealing with a bit of math ever, then geography is not such a good option. But if you’re willing and able to dip your toes in just a few basic math things, there are many threads within the discipline that are open to you.

6

JKelleyMap, that’s encouraging. She’ll never go for anything that involves chi-squared, I think. But the GIS stuff you describe sounds tractable. She has no problem with logical syntax. (She has considered going into some kind of computer programming field in the past–as long as they don’t make her do more than arithmetic! :wink: ).

7

Forgot to mention – Another time that a geographer deals with numbers is when she encounters coordinate systems (UTM, lat-long), typically when making a map from points acquired in the field with a GPS, or when working in a GIS with data sources that were originally compiled using different projections and/or coordinate systems. Again, no deep math skills are necessary, but you have to be prepared to learn a few things about the concepts behind these various things, and numbers will be a part of that.

ETA – glad to help, and tell her to jump in, the water’s warm! :wink:

8

I work with quite a few geographers and, for the most part, they couldn’t calculate their way out of a wet paper bag if their lives depended on it. I sometimes wonder how they manage a check book. The few that can actually understand coordinate transforms or basic trig stand out as exceptional. I am a harsh critic because I’m the programmer who has to try to execute their poorly thought out plans and who has to try to explain, in small words and numbers, why the thing they want doesn’t make sense. So take my snark with a grain of salt. It is a rare pleasure to work with a geographer who can understand math concepts beyond the basics.

One can clearly earn good money as a geographer with zero understanding of math beyond basic arthimetic. I work with those folks every day. But, if you want to be good at your job there is a lot of math that would help. Math isn’t just about doing calculations. Just having the knowledge, for example, that more than one coordinate system exists and that it is possible to change from one to the other is useful, even if you don’t know how to do the math. Just knowing what can be done with math is useful knowledge.

9

I agree with everything shiftless wrote, and on behalf of math-deficient Geographers everywhere, extend my sincere apologies.

As shiftless indicated, the important thing is to have some idea of how to ask the right questions, to have some understanding of what methods are appropriate to which tasks, and be ready to think something through in an organized fashion. Luckily, the Internet is full of good “teachers” these days. For example, the SDMB’s own Indistingushible once wrote a paragraph answer to some math question (not directly geography-related). I was intrigued by the gist of it, but there were three or four concepts mentioned which I was not at all familiar with. So, I spent the next two hours learning about them – working backwards from their Wikipedia articles, learning a bit about other terms mentioned in them, until it all started to connect with some basic principles I WAS familiar with.

I guess my point is that mad math skillz are not necessary, but a dollop of CURIOSITY about math techniques IS.

10

Shiftless that’s encouraging as well. “Knowing that more than one coordinate system exists and you can change from one to another–and able to grasp the benefits of doing so–but unable to reliably follow any algorithm for actually doing so” would be a fair descriptor of the person we’re discussing.

11

Just to contextualize this a little, what’s going on is she has just quit a job that she thought she would keep for several years, does not have a coherent work experience history, doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree in anything she is interested in doing or thinks she would be hired to do, and so is now wanting to go for a second bachelor’s and start over.

Transportation planning, landscape architecture, land surveying, and water quality assessment are four things which tests said her interests would cause her to enjoy, and those four things do sound nice to her, and all four are said to be areas in which the number of jobs will be growing over the next several years. And Geography is a degree which could lead to any one of those four.

But she’s deathly afraid of getting started down a path which turns out not to lead to something good. She’s understandably very risk averse about what to do next. She’s looking, if possible, for a more or less “sure thing” so far as “getting this degree will let me be good at jobs in that field and I’ll be able to advance to degree N and make a decent amount of money doing something I can stand to do and will be able to look my friends and family in the eye.” That kind of situation. Sure things are impossible to come by, of course, but I’m hoping to help her get as close to that as possible.

12

Geography is, surprisingly for me, a growing field these days. It is one of those subjects I used to disparage as useless back in college. With the boom in GIS and GPS and the availability of data on the internet I think geography is going to get even bigger in the near future. A lot of companies are going to want to integrate their existing data with the various geographic products coming out for example. So, IMO, geography is a good field to get into. Not a sure thing. If she wants a sure thing she needs to be a doctor.

But, as soon someone says they want to avoid a subject, in this case math, they are already setting themselves up for failure. This person needs to set a positive goal (learn an interesting subject) not a negative one (avoid math.)

13

This is, unfortunately, a firm and definite limitation in this person’s case. The extremely emotional and hurtful personal history involved, combined with the very great probability that she has a genuine cognitive dysfunction in the area, make the seemingly encouraging comment “you’re a smart person and you could definitely handle a little more math so let’s not make that a deal-breaker!” an absolute, show stopping dealbreaker for any further conversation with her on the topic.

That’s just how it is going to be. Knowing her as well as I do, I would go so far as to say that this is one of those cases where she genuinely isn’t “setting herself up” for anything. It’s been set up for her. Her course in life has brought her to a point where this is a genuine impossibility. The brick wall is in her mind, but it is for all that no less of a literal* brick wall.

*ly-metaphorically literal

14

What other kinds are there? :confused::eek:

15

Cultural, physical, statistical… find out more here!

16

Land surveying requires you to do a lot of math on the fly in the field. It’s not complicated math - slopes, elevations, angles, etc. are all pretty easily calculable with algebra and basic trig - but it’s something that has to be done consistently right or it’ll screw up everything that comes afterwards. If she’s really that math-phobic, I’d strike that one off the list.

That being said, I definitely agree with shiftless that she should set a positive rather than negative goal. Can she try to better define what kind of work she’s interested in doing? Does she know anyone working or studying in the fields that she’s interested in? Does she live near a college where she can visit and talk to someone in the geography department?

Finally, has she considered a Master’s degree instead of a second Bachelor’s? A typical MS is two years, but she might take a little more time to make up background work if she’s changing fields. Still, an MS might offer her a faster and cheaper route back to the job market with a more impressive credential.

(also, check your PMs, Frylock)

17

As I said, she started with what interests her and what she enjoys doing. From that, she created (with the aid of various “figure out your future career” tests like the Holland test) a list of possible fields to go into. That’s very much an example of “setting a positive goal.”

The math thing comes afterward. She doesn’t start with “I don’t want to do math.” She starts with “I like doing X.” Then, later, she sees what she can get away with that doesn’t require math of a higher leve than what she currently knows.

Does that clear things up? Can we stop repeating this argument? (Assume she’s already been through this discussion many times.)

She’s not sure how she could qualify for an M.S. program of any kind, given her current bachelors and (lack of coherent) job history. Can you say something more about this?

18

If she already has a bachelor’s degree and a decent GPA, she’s in good shape - there are a number of master’s programs that accept students with academic backgrounds in different fields. NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, for example, offers graduate degrees in urban planning and doesn’t restrict admissions to any particular major or even GPA. From their site:

There’s also a three-year Master of Landscape Architecture degree that’s common to a number of schools (e.g. U.C. Berkeley) and accredited by the American Society of Landscape Architects, and this program is open to students from different backgrounds as well. When she has a better idea of what/where she might want to study, she’ll be able to find some more specific information about those opportunities as well.

19

Funny! Enginerd is right, but I get you… Well, I did just see the recent film “Rise of Planet of the Apes”… Maybe there will be a chimp geographer someday. :wink:

20

As it turns out, I’m a graduate of that very program… BA in geography, Master’s in landscape architecture (from UC Berkeley), and (in six weeks) doctorate in geography.

I can’t speak to the job marketability of such a path (don’t ask!), but at least this anecdotally attests to some shared skills and subject matter between these realms. Land arch is just applied geography at the park or neighborhood scale (sometimes a bit bigger than this, sometimes a bit smaller.)