Timeline for What to do after a pure math academic path?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
81 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 27, 2023 at 8:25 | comment | added | coco | @Prem I wish you good luck in your future! If you like AI and economics, you will find something you like for sure! :) | |
| Nov 25, 2023 at 14:19 | comment | added | Prem | @coco I am a physics PhD student. I don't know how good I am, but worst case scenario, I will teach students at whatever place I get to. I love research and hopefully will also continue with it as I do some other job. I also have interest in AI and other economic stuff, so will try to make money through this route, although no idea how it will turn out. | |
| Nov 24, 2023 at 12:47 | comment | added | coco | @Prem haha thank you for the idea, though i'm not sure to be as good as Feynman :)) I have kind of a social phobia so teaching everyday or almost everyday would be a lot of stress :/ I was just normal in my research, not a superstar, otherwise i would have found a position wherever i wanted, but if one is just normal then he doesn't choose where he lives.. Have you found a permanent position? | |
| Nov 23, 2023 at 19:11 | comment | added | Prem | @coco also, teaching is an economic activity. Money is nothing but a token for having done some work that is useful for someone, which one can later exchange with someone else doing something useful for us. An alternative is becoming so good in a field that you can bargain and get paid just what you love. Again, Feynman had reached that stage. He taught because he wanted to, but did not do any administrative duty and never got fired for this. One can either become that good in a field or take a simple living route, doing just enough job to make ends meet and doing math in remaining time. | |
| Nov 23, 2023 at 19:00 | comment | added | Prem | @coco Of course teaching kids will be bad idea. I am talking about teaching students of higher grades. Why not go about this like Feynman did? He mixed original thinking in every topic that he taught. This made it fun for him as he discovered new perspectives. Also, he got to interact with students/answer their questions. He called this 'activity' that keeps things alive. The alternative would be to shut yourself down in a cottage and try to come up with original results. They may never come this way, without some 'activity'. | |
| Nov 21, 2023 at 16:09 | comment | added | coco | @Prem no i cannot find a job in academia, it is too competitive in Switzerland. I don't like to teach, also it is more about discipline than teaching and i am not able to educate kids that parents haven't been able to educate themselves... | |
| Nov 20, 2023 at 15:48 | comment | added | Prem | You are not able to get job a in academia in any institution? Why not try some college or university or school where you can teach math to people? | |
| Mar 15, 2023 at 15:48 | review | Close votes | |||
| Mar 20, 2023 at 3:07 | |||||
| Nov 3, 2022 at 13:56 | comment | added | coco | @RodrigodeAzevedo thank you for the idea, but i cannot study 3 years before starting to work, i need to pay my bills now.. :/ | |
| Oct 31, 2022 at 18:28 | comment | added | coco | @RodrigodeAzevedo thank you for your comment. I didn't get, you mean one should start again studies in law? how long does this take? | |
| Oct 31, 2022 at 15:59 | comment | added | Rodrigo de Azevedo | @coco In the US, a path is law school. Some former mathematicians and physicists end up in patent law. It can be very well-paid and legal documents should be easy for mathematicians to read. | |
| Oct 27, 2022 at 13:53 | comment | added | Vladimir Dotsenko | @coco for what it's worth, Switzerland has (in Zurich) one of the Google's programming hubs. Several people I know well who had a past life of studying to become mathematicians found their happiness there. I cannot be certain that this is a good thing for you personally to try, but it is something worth considering. If you wish you can contact me by email, and I can get you in touch with someone I know, they can tell you a bit what to expect. | |
| Oct 27, 2022 at 6:39 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | Just chiming in to offer my support for @VladimirDotsenko's last few comments. | |
| Oct 26, 2022 at 20:04 | comment | added | Roland Bacher | @coco The key producer is 'Kaba' in Zug (german speaking part of Switzerland). I doubt that they need a mathematician every month but there are surely other similar jobs. Good luck! | |
| Oct 26, 2022 at 19:52 | comment | added | Vladimir Dotsenko | @RobbieGoodwin indeed, the whole notion of "a pure math academic path" is difficult to comprehend for a non-mathematician, as almost every mathematician will have observed many times in their daily life. I would honestly suggest that you exercise some humility and avoid telling to mathematicians in what terms they should be talking about a serious real issue that arises in their profession. | |
| Oct 26, 2022 at 14:25 | comment | added | coco | @StevenLandsburg well it is just a matter of personal tastes and interests, i am not saying i am right. Yes i do see interest in YM theory, and yes i do hate finance. Since i am not autonomous, i also "need" money but working in that sector would be very painful to me | |
| Oct 26, 2022 at 13:58 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | @VladimirDotsenko I am not a maths researcher… merely someone who saw a Question on SE and thought it looked rather vague and the author seemed rather lost. You might, and I don't think it's clear whether "What to do after a pure math academic path" means "In pursuit of…" or "coming to the end of…" or "having completed…", nor whether "the society" means his neighbours, or a professional association. I thought clarity might get Peter more specific Answers. | |
| Oct 26, 2022 at 5:30 | comment | added | Vladimir Dotsenko | @LSpice what you see as credential checking I view as pointing out that a person who is interesting in maths recreationally is very likely to not understand the pertinence of the question to a research mathematician. | |
| Oct 26, 2022 at 4:05 | comment | added | LSpice | @VladimirDotsenko, while I don't agree personally with the very broad view of what's appropriate on MO, I certainly think your point is well taken about how more questions might be appropriate here than would be apparent to the casual observer. But let's not get into credential checking, such as asking whether other people are research mathematicians. After all, non-research mathematicians, however placed the parentheses, are welcome here as well. | |
| Oct 26, 2022 at 3:53 | comment | added | Vladimir Dotsenko | @RobbieGoodwin MathOverflow is intended to be about what is relevant to researchers in maths. (Are you one?) I strongly believe that this question is relevant because researchers in maths who supervise PhD students encounter such situations in real life (for instance, the usual "career path" of academia requires making a lot of drastic decisions which some people cannot choose to make, as discussed in the OP). So this discussion forum has a critical mass of people whose expertise prepared them to give some meaningful answers to this particular question, which is the whole point. | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 23:38 | answer | added | Kenneth | timeline score: -1 | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 19:43 | comment | added | Steven Landsburg | Maybe start here: arxiv.org/pdf/2106.03417.pdf . Or here: simons.berkeley.edu/programs/spectral2014 | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 19:37 | comment | added | Steven Landsburg | @coco : "I don't see the point" ... I venture to guess that once upon a time you didn't see the point of Yang-Mills theory. Sometimes when you learn a little about a subject, you start to see the point and then the subject changes from uninteresting to interesting. Maybe you should try the experiment of learning a little about finance or insurance or technologies. It's not that hard to learn a little bit, and that little bit might open up whole new worlds for you. | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 19:07 | comment | added | coco | @anjama thanks for the link! | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 19:05 | comment | added | coco | @HollisWilliams ha that's great. Unfortunately it is not like that in Switzerland. My former colleagues have actually these problems. | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 19:03 | comment | added | coco | @RobbieGoodwin i meant that i live in Switzerland and would like to stay here for several reasons. I do not want to live anywhere on the planet. I also meant that I am not convinced on the model of the society, on how it works, and i don't have any interest in finance, insurance, technologies and so on. I don't see the point | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:59 | comment | added | Hollis Williams | @coco Discipline problems in high school? This is not typically a problem in the UK because attendance at a high school is not compulsory, so students can essentially be told that they can leave if they do not wish to be there (I guess in other countries it might be a problem though). | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:55 | comment | added | coco | @HollisWilliams sure this would be an option. The thing is that high school teachers are involved in discipline problems rather than teaching maths. Also one needs to study 2 more years in order to have the right to teach here. I applied for teaching positions at university but didn't get it | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:51 | comment | added | coco | @JW theoretical physics and in particular cosmology :) | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:50 | comment | added | coco | @StevenLandsburg I have been working in spectral graph theory during my PhD, then during my postdocs on random matrices and combinatorial problems and finally on partition functions of Yang-Mills theory :) | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:48 | comment | added | coco | @Pulcinella thanks for the link! | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:47 | comment | added | coco | @RolandBacher thank you for your reply. Could you tell me which is this key producer in Switzerland? And who is this professor from Neuchatel working on spectra of lakes? | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:42 | comment | added | coco | @user127776 that's true, and it is very tiring to take so much time in the application process and my previous advisors also told me i should work on another project that i will (almost surely) succeed, just for the cv and list of publications! this is the negative part until getting a permanent position.. | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:36 | comment | added | coco | @Z.M thanks for the video! | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:36 | comment | added | coco | @MaxMuller thanks for the link! | |
| Oct 25, 2022 at 18:21 | comment | added | Dev Sinha | @coco This company in Switzerland inait.ai has a strong presence of math PhD's. | |
| Oct 24, 2022 at 16:05 | comment | added | SeanJ | @HollisWilliams poach from whom? tbh that statement is so far from the truth I don't know where to begin. this might help, small startup with no money etc. | |
| Oct 24, 2022 at 15:07 | answer | added | user1437 | timeline score: 8 | |
| Oct 23, 2022 at 15:45 | comment | added | LSpice | @HollisWilliams, I think there's a fine line, but, if someone posts saying "I am not sure how to use my mathematical knowledge", the options are to mention fine generalities, or else to mention specifics. (Another option seems to be to relate one's own personal experience, which may be motivating but is probably not directly useful.) While there have been lots of pleasant generalities, surely it is a specific answer (such as, though not necessarily specifically, @SeanJ's) that is likely to be most useful, even if it does smack of an advert? | |
| Oct 23, 2022 at 12:07 | comment | added | Hollis Williams | @SeanJ This post isn't really here for you to try to ''poach'' students to projects which you are working on. | |
| Oct 23, 2022 at 7:47 | answer | added | bubba | timeline score: 22 | |
| Oct 23, 2022 at 1:21 | comment | added | anjama | My rep is too low to post an answer, but see my answer here: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/184331/… The TLDR: there are tons of other fields where the mathematical applications lag the state of the art in mathematics significantly. If there's another field that's ever interested you, chances are that there are people open to collaborations with mathematicians. There are even grants for this type of thing (see NSF's Mathematical Biology grant as an example) | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 23:21 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | Can you say what "I am not ready to apply all over the world hoping to find a position somewhere sometimes" means in real terms? Can you paraphrase that, at least two different ways? Similarly, can you say what "I don't have any interest in anything from the society" means? | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 21:39 | answer | added | PeaBrane | timeline score: 6 | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 18:41 | comment | added | Hollis Williams | I have friends who completed a Mathematics PhD and now teach mathematics at a secondary school, this may not be appealing to you though. If you wish to continue staying involved in mathematics, teaching in schools is one possibility. | |
| S Oct 22, 2022 at 17:03 | history | edited | LSpice | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Partially reverting unnecessary changes from a previous edit
|
| S Oct 22, 2022 at 17:03 | history | suggested | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Copy edited. Fixed the question formation - missing auxiliary verb - see e.g. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4yWEt0OSpg&t=1m49s> (QUASM) - alternatively, drop the question mark. In English, the subjective form of the singular first-person pronoun, "I", is capitalized.
|
| Oct 22, 2022 at 16:06 | comment | added | J W | And what physics you did. | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 15:45 | review | Close votes | |||
| Oct 24, 2022 at 19:36 | |||||
| Oct 22, 2022 at 14:59 | comment | added | Steven Landsburg | Perhaps you could get more helpful suggestions about possible career paths if you told us a little more about what area of math you've been working in. | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 14:53 | history | protected | Asaf Karagila♦ | ||
| Oct 22, 2022 at 14:53 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Asaf Karagila♦ | ||
| Oct 22, 2022 at 14:21 | comment | added | Pulcinella | Try contacting someone at 80000hours.org | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 13:59 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Oct 22, 2022 at 17:03 | |||||
| Oct 22, 2022 at 13:56 | answer | added | ps1 | timeline score: -9 | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 13:33 | comment | added | Roland Bacher | oxygen in the lakes when they have a lack of it. There are interesting math problems in the robot-industry (another swiss-speciality) where mathematicians are useful and so on. Try to go to a few math departements and speak to the people there (especially the applied mathematicians can have useful contacts). | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 13:29 | comment | added | Roland Bacher | Coco, since you are in Switzerland, did you try to speak to people, say in the EPFL or the ETH and ask for their advice. I think you can find there mathematicians which do interesting work in relation with industries. Examples: There is a big key-producer in Switzerland: They need mathematicians for combinatorial problems when developping keys. Another example: The (now retired) professor for applied math at the University of Neuchatel computed 'spectra of lakes' (given by solving Laplacian-operators on a domain given by the lake). The initial motiviation was where to put most efficiently | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 7:14 | answer | added | R.P. | timeline score: 18 | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 5:38 | comment | added | user127776 | My perspective is that in the real world you either have to be genius or have a lot of money (sufficient amount of money for your purpose) to be able to do the things you truly care about. If the first option is not viable then the next best thing is to figure our out the money situation. BTW having an academic job without being a genius (whatever that might mean) can turn into the worst nightmare, it turns into the game of pleasing others in the hope of potentially getting a permanent job. | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 5:12 | answer | added | Kapil | timeline score: 16 | |
| Oct 22, 2022 at 1:39 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Oct 21, 2022 at 23:09 | comment | added | Max Lonysa Muller | Take a look at this MSE question: math.stackexchange.com/questions/71874/… | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 19:21 | comment | added | Noah Snyder | Also you might consider therapy if you have affordable options. Unhappy and going through an enormous life change is the model situation for a couple months of talking to a counselor. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 19:20 | comment | added | Noah Snyder | It might be helpful to take a step back and think about what you like to do and are good at, and not just what will be most similar to what you’ve been doing. Do you like to write? Do you like build systems? Do you like to explain things? There might be other local maxima you’ll like that aren’t just “math but less fun.” | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:59 | comment | added | Dave L Renfro | @Alec Rhea: Very interesting career path! I'm reminded of this mathoverflow user who is a professional truck driver. I've had several math literature exchanges with him over the past 10-15 years, mainly with regard to this pet project of his. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:53 | answer | added | David White | timeline score: 46 | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:48 | comment | added | Paul Siegel | @coco I think you will struggle to find any sort of employment that does not interact with the concept of money - even academic jobs are funded by tuition money and research grants. But if it would suffice for the work itself to interact with financial considerations minimally, then you can consider data science jobs in health care, technology, supply chain, etc. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:44 | comment | added | Z. M | You might also watch this interview of Saul Glasman. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:15 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @coco: I can only imagine the terrible advice you would get here re that! I would focus on choosing a place where you would like to live, and then get deeply involved in your local community. Fundamentally, other people (not necessarily family!) are a more stable source of happiness and meaning than a job. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:14 | history | edited | coco | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 1 character in body
|
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:11 | comment | added | coco | @AndyPutman thanks for the tips. That's also another problem in my personal life, i haven't found my soul mate neither but i don't think people on this forum can help me on this ^^. So finding a not-too-annoying job is important to me. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:07 | comment | added | coco | @PaulSiegel of course it is my personal vision of the world and of life, it is a matter of taste and philosophical point of view of life, but i do not like the concept of money, so working in finance would be very hard. Also learning something I don't have any interest in is very difficult to me. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:05 | comment | added | Alec Rhea | Ah, I understand -- best of luck. (and I totally agree that data science/finance sound... yeesh!) | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:04 | comment | added | coco | @AlecRhea yes that's great. I also hope to have time to continue my research, once i find a solution to my life... I live in Switzerland, I'm a lady, not sure I'm ready to become a firefighter ;) it's great if it works for you! | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 18:01 | comment | added | Alec Rhea | As someone in a similar boat, I've chosen to pursue a career path that gives me plenty of time to dedicate to mathematics research -- I don't know what country you're in, but in America being a firefighter is a fantastic option. Good pay, you get to sit at the firehouse working on whatever if there are no fires, and you usually have 3-4 days a week off. (Also you can pursue a degree in fire science all the way up to a PhD if you like, and this improves your career prospects for being a fire chief etc.) | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 17:58 | comment | added | Sidharth Ghoshal | I wouldn't only look for jobs that "math" as a requirement, a lot of the tech field would be something you can jump into and may not explicitly require math (but certainly benefit from some rigorous thinking). If money isn't the primary motivator then you also have areas like policy-making and think tanks you can apply for that would benefit from your analytic skills | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 17:58 | comment | added | Andy Putman | tying your sense of meaning and satisfaction very directly to your work. I think I'm lucky in that neither of my parents were academics, so I grew up with a better sense of how normal people relate to their job. Namely, they both liked their jobs, but less because of what they did and more because they liked their coworkers a lot and found their work mostly not too boring. Neither of them would say that their job gave their life meaning (that came from their family, community, hobbies, etc.). I think that's a healthier way to live, to be honest. | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 17:58 | comment | added | Andy Putman | There's always secondary school teaching, but that can be hard if you're not called to it. But I would take a broader view of the high-tech industry. I have former PhD students working at places like Google, and they seem to enjoy the day-to-day challenges of their job, and seem mostly fairly happy. There's also a broader message I would give you that I think is important for people thinking about leaving academia. In the culture of academia, there is a strong emphasis of intensely loving mathematics itself, and (continued) | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 17:50 | comment | added | Paul Siegel | I'm not sure if anything has "happened to the world" - 30 years ago data science didn't exist, and your only choice was finance. Also, data science and finance are both huge fields, and I have to wonder how hard you've actually looked for beauty (mathematical or otherwise) in them. How much do you know about the theory of stochastic differential equations? Information theory? Bayesian inference? | |
| Oct 21, 2022 at 17:45 | history | edited | coco |
edited tags
|
|
| Oct 21, 2022 at 17:38 | history | asked | coco | CC BY-SA 4.0 |