Month: July 2009

Do you want to go into business?  Did you know that a major in mathematics is a great preparation for business school?  Mathematics majors consistently outscore almost every other major on the GMAT, the graduate business school entrance exam.

In fact, Dmitri Kuksov, a professor of marketing at the Olin School of Business says

“Math… is possibly the best undergraduate background to get into business schools”

Steven Wheelwright, former professor at the Harvard Business School, and now president of BYU-Hawaii says,

“Mathematics provided an approach to problem solving and analysis that has continued to be of great help to me in my academic and business career.  It has also been of great benefit as I have tackled both research projects and consulting projects involving data analysis and statistics.  And it was where I started my academic teaching career – and then provided a foundation as I moved into Operations Strategy and New Product Development.”

Do you want to be a lawyer? Did you know that a major in mathematics is a great preparation for law school? Mathematics majors consistently outscore almost every other major on the LSAT, the Law School Admissions Test.

Do you want to become a doctor? Did you know that students who major in mathematics have one of the highest acceptance rates into medical school? In fact, acceptance rates for mathematics students over the last 4 years have averaged 6% higher than for students who majored in biological sciences and 38% higher than for students who majored in health or exercise sciences.

"In the past, one could get by on intuition and experience. Times have changed. Today, the name of the game is data." — Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics

More and more, math is an essential tool to survive in today’s world.  Math is a powerful tool for understanding the world, and almost everyone—from advertising agencies to doctors, from retailers to builders—everyone who doesn’t want to be left behind is using math to do their job better and to get ahead in the world.

“The world is moving into a new age of numbers. …Just look at where the mathematicians are now. They’re helping to map out advertising campaigns, they’re changing the nature of research in newsrooms and in biology labs, and they’re enabling marketers to forge new one-on-one relationships with customers. As this occurs, more of the economy falls into the realm of numbers.”  Business Week, Math will Rock Your World, January 23, 2006

The formulas and ideas you learn in math are very useful, but even if you never use them again, learning math develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills—it makes you smarter. 

Your body gets stronger when you exercise it by running, lifting weights, and jumping rope.  Your mind gets stronger when you do math—solving problems, understanding new ideas, and proving theorems.  Most athletes don’t lift weights in competition, but having stronger muscles helps you in all your sports.   Most people don’t do advanced math for their work, but being smarter helps you in everything you do.

• Math helps you learn how to solve the hard challenges in your life that no one has solved before. 
• Math helps you learn to recognize mistakes in thinking and errors in arguments—it helps you recognize when people are lying to you or trying to cheat you. 
• Math helps you handle data.  The world is filled with more and more numbers, patterns, and data.  Math gives you the important tools you need to deal with it all, make sense of it, and use it in your life.