Applied Math or Operations Research

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m currently looked at getting a second MS in order to expand my career opportunities. I’m currently an engineer for a large government contractor. Applied math would help with the numerical analysis, and perhaps would be more marketable in a general sense? Operations research would make a possible transition into business/finance easier. Any opinions on those who have studied either or work in mathematical modeling?

Also, I’ll probably pursue an online degree. Columbia has both programs, but is much more expensive than, say, University of Washington. Is that reputation still marketable from an online degree? I could pay for the latter completely out of the continuing education support of my employer, but would either need to pay some out of pocket or extend the program for the former if it’s worth it in the long term.

2

My general impression is that numerical methods are a much more specialized skillset, and that OR translates better into general analytics jobs. If you’re really interested in doing numerical stuff, then the applied math program might be a good choice, but otherwise I’d think pretty seriously about doing OR and maybe taking some electives in numerical methods.

As far as the Columbia degree goes, I don’t think that it’s actually all that valuable on the west coast regardless of the online aspect. Plus, if the UW program is free to you, that’s a pretty compelling argument.

3

I’m an engineering academic, and deal with both OR and Math people. I think both the perception and the reality is that Math folks are a lot geekier than OR people. So, employability-wise, I’d base the decision on the geekiness factor of the industries you might want to work in.

4

Could also look into statistics, which generally has pretty good job prospects. With an engineering background, it could make you very marketable.

5

Thanks for your opinions.

I would have thought that OR was more specialized. Most of the applied math programs do look like they’re very fixated on PDE’s though, so I guess the opposite makes sense.

6

Yes, applied math has really narrowed to PDEs and applied mathematicians won’t do or teach anything else. I, for example, have publications in both a linguistic journal and a computer science journal, both applying my mathematical specialty, but no applied mathematician would count that.