What to do in industry

[robert_columbia]

@Itself

…This is a bit of a tangent, but one thing I’ve noticed that really annoys some mathematicians, scientists, and engineers it that law isn’t at all mathematical. Rather, they expect it to be entirely algorithmic, with laws essentially equivalent to computer programs: you pop in the relevant facts as parameters, check to see whether your ‘function’ returns true of false, and take corrective action accordingly. It doesn’t quite work that way in real life…

Wow, this is very very close to my perspective as a software developer. It feels like I should be able to read a statute and make a flowchart, write an algorithm, etc. to dissect its meaning. E.g. "

IF victim.Injuries[indictment.AllegedInjury].Source.ID=defendant.ID
AND
defendant.HadWeapon(indictment.TimeOfIncident.ConvertToUTC())
AND
StateLegalDictionary.Editions[3].Revisions[2].IsDeadlyWeapon(defendant.GetMostDangerousWeaponPosessed(indictment.TimeOfIncident.ConvertToUTC()))
AND
CommunityMap.IsCommunitySafetyZone(indictment.IncidentLocation)
THEN
defendant.Convict(OffenseLibrary.AggravatedAssault, OffenseDegrees.First, currentCourt.DocketNumber)
ELSE
defendant.Acquit(currentCourt.DocketNumber)
END;
currentCourt.LoadNextCase();
"

[friedo]

@robert_columbia

Or maybe even for advising clients, e.g. “Based on an analysis of 1000 sampled Aggravated Assault cases in this state over the past 50 years, the chance of getting an acquittal at a jury trial for Aggravated Assault when the prosecution does not have any DNA evidence, medical evidence, or bystander witnesses and is relying only on the testimony of the alleged victim is 95%. Don’t plead guilty, if you go to trial you’ll probably win.”

FWIW, I’ve been hired as a consultant a couple times by a law firm to do some data analysis related to civil cases. That’s not math, of course, it was basically a lot of ETL drudgery and SQL queries, but it was an interesting departure from what I usually do.

And if I wanted, I could at least pretend I’m doing pure relational algebra instead of applied SQL.

[Itself]

@Dorjan

Outside of academia, math exists to be used. It has to be applied in SOME type of way, or it has no value. If you are that gung ho about avoiding applied math in any form, you are pretty much stuck with academia, so all those things you were griping about having to do to stay in academia along with getting lucky, I hope you are doing them!

Oh, I’d love to stay in academia; it’s just that things may not work out.

@Icarus

All people in all career fields want what you want, to a great degree (autonomy, interesting and rewarding work, etc). Since that is the case, what you are expressing is a baseline - for everyone - it’s like desiring light, and gravity, and air to breathe.

Of course they are, and I’m certainly not going to get everything I want. The only point is that the weight I give to things like the reward from the work is far greater than the weight I give to things like, say, salary or work hours. I’m hardly unique in wanting that, but still.

@AnaMen (but not really

blah blah blah blah

I’m sorry a mathematician wouldn’t let you eat cookies as a child, or slept with your wife, or whatever other excuse you have, but take the personal insults and sneering commentary elsewhere.

[Itself]

@robert_columbia

Wow, this is very very close to my perspective as a software developer. It feels like I should be able to read a statute and make a flowchart, write an algorithm, etc. to dissect its meaning. E.g. […]

Yeah, and that’s what I would naively expect (and probably want) too, not having any experience in law. It doesn’t work that way in practice, though. Should it? It would certainly be nice to pick up a law, follow through a flowchart, and determine whether I’m breaking it or not. That’s not possible with very broad statements like, say, Constitutional amendments, but I guess I also would like more definitive and objective conditions in laws. Or maybe I just lack the legal skills to recognize them.

[Itself]

@Voyager

I never was interested in startups since I have wanted to do at least some work that was forward looking, and startups can’t afford that kind of thing. I do respect people who go into them, not for me.

I’m also interested in living indoors and buying food, and starting your own start-up is a bit risky for that. It’s great if it works out, and congratulations to the people who have the courage and ambition to risk it, but it’s really not for me either.

[Itself]

Anyway, it looks like I’m not going to find what I want in industry (although various research labs or the NSA look like the best bet) and would have to accept a lot of compromises or just give up the notion of working on math. Oh well. Hopefully the academic route will continue, and I won’t have to figure out exactly what I’m willing to give up.

[Enginerd]

@Itself

I’m sorry a mathematician wouldn’t let you eat cookies as a child, or slept with your wife, or whatever other excuse you have, but take the personal insults and sneering commentary elsewhere.

AnaMen’s post was harsh, but it pretty accurately reflected the way you’re coming off in this thread. Icarus touched on the same thing. You say you’re looking for a backup plan in case an academic job doesn’t work out, but it sure seems like you’re rejecting anything that isn’t pure research. If you do get that academic research job, then you’re golden and the thread is moot. If you don’t, you’re going to have to work at a job that has some aspects that are lees than ideal.

Outside of academia, jobs don’t usually exist unless they produce something of value. It doesn’t necessarily have to be economic value (although those jobs tend to pay more), but it has to be valuable enough that an employer thinks it’s worth putting money behind. Great and significant mathematical problems don’t do that until they are applied. If you’re truly looking for a plan B, you’re going to have to come to terms with applying math rather than just thinking about it.

[Itself]

@Enginerd

AnaMen’s post was harsh, but it pretty accurately reflected the way you’re coming off in this thread. Icarus touched on the same thing. You say you’re looking for a backup plan in case an academic job doesn’t work out, but it sure seems like you’re rejecting anything that isn’t pure research. If you do get that academic research job, then you’re golden and the thread is moot. If you don’t, you’re going to have to work at a job that has some aspects that are lees than ideal.

Fair enough. It looks like there isn’t any sort of good place for me in industry, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place whatsoever. Like I said, I’ll have to work out exactly what I’m giving up.

@Enginerd

Outside of academia, jobs don’t usually exist unless they produce something of value. It doesn’t necessarily have to be economic value (although those jobs tend to pay more), but it has to be valuable enough that an employer thinks it’s worth putting money behind. Great and significant mathematical problems don’t do that until they are applied. If you’re truly looking for a plan B, you’re going to have to come to terms with applying math rather than just thinking about it.

Sure. It’s not the application itself; I don’t care about applications particularly, but I don’t have any sort of aversion to them. Mostly what I’m worried about giving up is the opportunity to work on cool, deep math topics. If there’s a company that has some marketable application for them (which probably isn’t going to be case anywhere, with the possible exception of cryptography), terrific. Most of the problems I’ve seen in industry, however difficult or complicated they are, are not ones of mathematics; rather, they’re ones of dealing with huge piles of data, or figuring out to model a complicated system accurately or at least usefully (without any esoteric math behind those models), or designing complicated systems, or writing code to implement those designs, or so on. They’re certainly worthwhile things, but not the sort of thing I care about. If there’s nothing available that I do care about, then, well, there’s nothing for it. I have friends in industry who are excited about working with particular neat tools that they like: software, hardware, or even particular people whose brains they want to pick. It would be nice if I could find something like that as well, but that’s probably too much to hope for.

[AnaMen]

@Itself

I’m sorry a mathematician wouldn’t let you eat cookies as a child, or slept with your wife, or whatever other excuse you have, but take the personal insults and sneering commentary elsewhere.

Truth hurts, eh?
Good luck with getting someone to pay you to do stuff you enjoy that is of no use to anyone.
Don’t worry, if you fail at the math thing, maybe you can be a dean! Or teach high school!
Just kidding, you will probably manage to finish and can bitterly teach at community college, griping daily about how stupid your students and coworkers are. You’re gonna make it, dude, just hang in there!

[Itself]

Cool story, bro. Good luck doing whatever it is you do.

[Voyager]

@Itself

Sure. It’s not the application itself; I don’t care about applications particularly, but I don’t have any sort of aversion to them. Mostly what I’m worried about giving up is the opportunity to work on cool, deep math topics. If there’s a company that has some marketable application for them (which probably isn’t going to be case anywhere, with the possible exception of cryptography), terrific. Most of the problems I’ve seen in industry, however difficult or complicated they are, are not ones of mathematics; rather, they’re ones of dealing with huge piles of data, or figuring out to model a complicated system accurately or at least usefully (without any esoteric math behind those models), or designing complicated systems, or writing code to implement those designs, or so on. They’re certainly worthwhile things, but not the sort of thing I care about. If there’s nothing available that I do care about, then, well, there’s nothing for it.

I like to hire PhDs. (Though not math ones.) The reason is that they have a very broad range of in-depth knowledge, and good ones can apply an esoteric result from research to a practical problem and get far better results than someone who doesn’t have that depth. What doesn’t work is trying to find an application for your favorite couple of research topics.
PhD topics are necessarily narrow, but what you do after you finish should be a lot broader. You’ll die from boredom if you don’t broaden your interests.
And real innovation comes from bringing methods from field A into field B.