

Taking more math in school will raise your income - cwan
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/08/how_to_get_smart.cfm

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njharman
Alternatively smart people and/or hard working people make more money, they
also tend to take "hard" courses such as advanced math while in highschool.

No causation required.

~~~
shawndrost
Individual effort is controlled for in the study discussed: "each extra
required maths course raised the annual income of black males by 15%". Of
course, this study still doesn't make a strong case for causation -- the
number of required math courses in a school is likely correlated with school
quality, which is likely correlated with other socioeconomic factors.

~~~
jey
Huh? How do you infer that individual effort was controlled for by quoting
"each extra required maths course raised the annual income of black males by
15%"?

~~~
shawndrost
"each extra -required- maths course" -- as in required by the school. This is
also made clear in the linked paper:
<http://www.columbia.edu/~jg2394/papers/jobmarket.pdf>

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tokenadult
Yes, I asked about this a while ago, with an interesting discussion ensuing.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633540>

As the submitted article here notes,

"Of course, finding qualified teachers to teach advanced maths courses will
not be easy."

Not easy by far. Here is a detailed article about just how difficult it is to
find elementary school teachers who know even very basic math

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf>

and how especially lacking such teachers are in school districts with mostly
poor students from ethnic minorities. One finding from that article
illustrates the grave nature of the problem:

"in my first visit in 1986 to a K-6 elementary school, I discovered that not a
single teacher knew how to find the area of a rectangle."

~~~
sethjohn
Teach for America and Teach First (the British equivalent) are actually doing
a great job at addressing this problem. They are able to recruit teachers from
top universities to work in some of the worst schools, precisely by focussing
on the difficulties and challenges of the job.

From a different economist article:
[http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?stor...](http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14133684)
"Nearly a tenth of Oxford’s class of 2009 will be Teaching First this autumn."

I've heard the statistics are similar with a huge percentage of Harvard's
graduating class going into Teach for America.

~~~
cwan
Unfortunately, unions strongly oppose Teach for America: "Teach for America --
the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest
school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up
42% from 2008. ... Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach
for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide"
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124061253951954349.html>

------
teehee
Greenspun had a good post related to this:
[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/08/11/comfortable-
wi...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/08/11/comfortable-with-our-
stupid-children/)

I once lost out on a job because of my Calculus grade in college.

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mgrouchy
I would imagine this to be true. I have done a quite a bit of math as a
requirement for getting my CS degree, but I have never been very good at all.

This finds me balking from math heavy software development jobs because I feel
like my math skills will hold me back(or at least slow me down). This is sad,
because many of the most lucrative software development jobs I see are
generally pretty math heavy. I would venture to guess this is the same in
other fields as well.

~~~
donw
This is why I skipped CS, and got a degree in Mathematics. It's not that it's
impossible to pick up some solid math skills on your own, but if you're
already programming for a hobby, learning a lot of what gets covered in CS is
pretty simple, compared to picking up higher-level mathematics.

Abstract algebra and analysis (Calculus the way it should be) changed my
perspective a hell of a lot more than any of the CS courses I took, and the
time in formal math makes the process of turning academic papers into working
code a lot easier.

~~~
timwiseman
I largely agree. I went for a Math rather than a CS degree myself. With that
said, you will be required to learn a lot of math in a decent CS course and an
interested student can pick up on the rest themselves relatively easily.

~~~
mgrouchy
Ahh if only I was a good student. That being said, trying to bone up on my
skills as I am looking at some jobs doing geomatics stuff.

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proee
If you sit in the front row of the classroom, you'll also get straight A's.

~~~
mattheww
Actually a study in Colorado showed that sitting in front does improve
performance:

[http://www.psycho.uni-
duesseldorf.de/abteilungen/ddp/Dokumen...](http://www.psycho.uni-
duesseldorf.de/abteilungen/ddp/Dokumente/Sonstiges/SurprisingImpactOfSeatLocation.pdf)

~~~
likpok
This makes sense with how I feel when I go to classes.

Whenever I sit in the back, I always struggle much more to pay attention, even
when the lecturer is good.

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stanleydrew
It doesn't look like this generalizes. It's true for young black males at low
levels of math education based on this study, but there's nothing to suggest
anything more than that. I have a math degree and I wish everybody would take
more math, but I don't think there's much causality between taking math and
earning more at higher levels of math education. There certainly may be
correlation though.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I don't think it's about math degree levels of math education. it's about the
fact that all the highest earning majors with the exception of maybe law
require at least the calculus series.

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online
Really? I have a bachelor in applied mathematics, I like math and algorithm,
but when i was interviewed with a software engineer position, i had been asked
all kinds of c++ programming questions, and these "do you have experience on
this and that". I had to spend extra time on these things, i just felt why i
didn't directly get into computer science program and spending more time on
these detailed engineering things at school

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dschobel
What a revelation! I can't wait to tell it to my lawyer friend who hasn't
taken a math class since his sophomore year of highschool and makes $145k/yr
three years removed from an English degree.

Won't his face be red!

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jpwagner
good old 6th-grader-quality research.

correlation mistaken for causation...so frustratingly pervasive in our
society.

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zackattack
I just graduated from University, and I intuitively believed that taking more
math would make me a smarter person. So although my major was Psych, I took
courses in Analysis, Algebra, Discrete, and Number Theory. Of course,
potential employers have neither seem to have given a fuck nor realized just
how difficult Analysis was, but whatever-

I even implemented the thinking style I picked up in Analysis, such as the
notion of a compact space [as it relates to social cohesion], while writing a
paper on Aristotle's Politics in my sophomore year. I didn't use any math
words at all, and instead drew a diagram to illustrate what I meant, and
really enhanced my argument.

Anyway, bottom line: I took a shitload of math to make myself smarter and to
enhance my nerd cred; nobody seems to care; maybe someone here will give a
care; since I'm ultimately probably going to be self-employed anyway, perhaps
my improved mental acumen will pay off financially, but as of yet it's
unclear.

~~~
tokenadult
What did you expect to do after graduation with your major in psychology? What
are some of the most interesting things you learned in your psychology
courses? (I ask, because I am writing a working paper in psychology--about IQ
testing--just now.)

~~~
zackattack
Favorite topics: working memory; attention; instrumental conditioning;
emotional regulation.

~~~
tokenadult
I'm very interested in working memory and attention, and know very little of
the literature on those subjects. I'll look for your comments on posts about
those issues.

~~~
zackattack
I'm going to try to draft up a blog post about working memory and the
relationship between working memory and attention - if you send me an email
[zackster/@gma\il.com] I will link you to it.

