New Career Added: Psychometrician

We Use Math continuously frequently adds new careers to the site. The most recent is Psychometrician that makes up to $200, 000 a year.

Psychometrics refers to the measurement of an individual’s psychological attributes, including the knowledge, skills, and abilities a professional might need to work in a particular job or profession. Also, psychometricians write exams such as the MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, SAT, ACT, and Advance Placement test.

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Competitions

The American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) is dedicated to the goal of strengthening the mathematical capabilities of America’s youth by identifying, recognizing and rewarding excellence in mathematics through a series of national contests. The entry examinations are the AMC 8, AMC 10, and AMC 12 and are designed for students in grades 6 through 12. The AMC contests are intended for everyone from the average student at a typical school who enjoys mathematics to the very best student at the most special school. More information can be found at http://www.unl.edu/amc.

n-body problem

In the n-body problem, we seek to describe the interaction between a fixed number of objects under Newton’s Law of Gravity. A simple equation given by Newton in 1687 describes the gravitational attraction between two objects. Using a computer, we can compute the sum of the forces acting on a fixed number of objects. Once this is known, we can deduce where the object will be in the next time step.

These images show some newly discovered periodic (repeating) orbits for 3 and 4 bodies.

Caption A: Three bodies with equal mass orbiting on a figure eight. This result was published in 2000.

Caption B: Three bodies of unequal mass. This system is similar to a planet orbiting a binary star system.

Caption C: Two pairs of bodies orbiting about each other.

Caption D: An orbit discovered in 2008 by Tiancheng Ouyang, Duokui Yan, and Skyler Simmons at BYU.

This problem is far from a mathematical curiosity. For example, NASA uses computations like these to model motions for launches of space probes and other spacecraft.