# business and math **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 8, 1999, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864 "1999-07-08T18:05:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 1999, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/1 "1999-07-09T05:58:00Z")
Why the heck do students need to take so much stinken math to get a business degree? When do business people ever use Calculus these days? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 1999, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/2 "1999-07-08T18:05:00Z")
mik - We’ve discussed this one before. Check out the thread below for some answers. [http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000461.html](http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000461.html) ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 1999, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/3 "1999-07-09T03:45:00Z")
As a matter of interest, I saw a book yesterday, I didn’t catch the author – some statistics professor at Univ of Edinborough, I think. Anyway, it’s about statistics and law. Frinstance, an individual breaks a window to burglarize a house, struggles with the owner and both bleed, flees with the silver. A suspect is caught. The blood type of the homeowner is found on the suspect’s clothing; it’s a common type, about 35% of the population has that type. The blood type on the carpet is the same as the suspect, a rare type (only 10% of the population.) The shards of glass in the victims’s elbow are a 90% probable match to the window. Etc etc. You have a string of probabilities; what’s the degree of certainty that your suspect is guilty? There are examples of the prosecutors and defense attorneys and the judges making dramatic errors in interpreting statistical probability. **That’s** why you need math. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 1999, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/4 "1999-07-09T04:47:00Z")
I also think that the analytical skills used in higher math help you in the business world. Even if you don’t use the math, the problem solving skills you develop will help out. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 1999, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/5 "1999-07-09T06:51:00Z")
There will come a point where you will need to be able to read a spread sheet. And you will have to have a “feel” for the numbers you see. Experence tells you what you need to see. A math background gives you the language to explain it to the people who don’t see it. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/7 "2022-01-28T17:17:05Z")
[Deleted to avoid a zombification of a thread - just realised how old this one was] ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/8 "2022-01-28T17:20:57Z")
It looks like all posters from before the year 2000 have been assimilated. ---
**Author:** ![Noelq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noelq/32/16438_2.png) [@Noelq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noelq)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/9 "2022-01-28T18:36:25Z")
You are mistaken. There are no posters before 2000. I repeat. THERE ARE NO POSTERS BEFORE THE YEAR 2000. I think Riemann needs… re-education. ::sinister glare:: ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/10 "2022-01-28T20:35:29Z")
A lot of engineering jobs require very little math, too. Many industries want their employees to have taken math classes. Not because the jobs necessarily require math. But because (they believe) it demonstrates logic, reason, and discipline. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/11 "2022-01-28T22:52:34Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > [Deleted to avoid a zombification of a thread - just realised how old this one was]   It didn’t work. 🙂 Actually, math – even the dreaded calculus – does turn up in business situations. I took a class in Economics once. – Just in introductory class, the kind you’d take to meet a breadth requirement. I remember very little of it, but I do remember this: I was the only one in the class, I think, with some calculus background. Everyone else only knew some algebra, and most of them barely even that. So there were all the economic things, details like price/demand curves, “velocity of money” graphs, and all kinds of mathematical ideas. All presented in a very basic “dummies” kind of way. But there were two graphs of two economic phenomena – I have utterly no recollection what they were – but I immediately recognized that one of them was the first derivative of the other. The textbook certainly didn’t point out any such details, and I don’t imagine anyone else in the class (and probably not even the teacher) ever noticed it. So a little math, beyond algebra, can help one to understand how various economic ideas connect up with one another. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/12 "2022-01-28T23:02:38Z")
You can’t understand statistics without calculus. Sure, you don’t necessarily need to memorize your integration tables (not that you need to anyway), but you should know what it means to integrate over a function (like a probability distribution function). ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2022, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/13 "2022-01-28T23:03:04Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > A lot of engineering jobs require very little math, too. That’s true, but as an engineer you have to know the math to understand what you’re working with. And I think that’s true for economists as well. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2022, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/14 "2022-01-29T02:16:00Z")
Business majors need a math class that they call calculus. It’s extremely dumbed down compared to the calculus taken by engineers. Or compared to the calculus taken by high schoolers, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2022, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/15 "2022-01-29T04:26:52Z")
Old as this thread is, Merton and Scholes already got their Nobel Memorial Prize by 1997, and despite the stereotype that economists can barely apply linear regression, as far as I can tell businesses have been engaging in all sorts of quantitative mathematical modelling since long before then anyway, even if you point out that this or that individual successful businessman barely passed “business calculus”. It seems relevant to point out that businesses have adopted rigorous methods like double-entry bookkeeping for many centuries, for a reason. [Not saying that basic accounting requires quantum stochastic calculus, but am suggesting that what works, works even when mathematics is involved. There have been huge efforts, not necessarily to prop up businesses or capitalism, but by “social scientists” to adopt analytical methods that in the past might have belonged more to high-energy experimental physics.] ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2022, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/16 "2022-01-29T04:46:01Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > That’s true, but as an engineer you have to know the math to understand what you’re working with. And I think that’s true for economists as well. My economics degree required courses in both calculus and statistics. Not easy ones. You simply cannot do economics without it, and you aren’t getting into a decent grad program without a solid base of mathematics. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2022, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/business-and-math/1864/17 "2022-01-29T05:14:51Z")
> [@system](#): > > We’ve discussed this one before. Check out the thread below for some answers. > > [http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000461.html](http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000461.html) This link is broken, but I was curious what other thread it was a link to. I think it must have been this one: > [@Why do so many college majors require Calculus?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-college-majors-require-calculus/1630): > > I had to take 2 semesters of calculus to get my Business Degree in MIS. I have worked 5 years and never used it. I never use Calculus, Geomerty, or Trig on the job. The only math I use at work is basic Algebra and arithmetic. I expect the same can be said of a lot of professions (Computer Scientist, Biologist, Economist,…). Why then, do so many of these college majors require Calculus?