

Can I use my powers for good? - nemoto
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/71874/can-i-use-my-powers-for-good

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jimrandomh
For most skillsets, the answer is: pick the career that makes the most money,
figure out what the best charity is, and give most of your money to that
charity. Trying to be philanthropic _directly_ is usually less effective than
making money and then paying others to do good on your behalf. On the other
hand, maybe you can do more good directly, by working for a charity.

In either case, you need serious research and numbers to figure out what the
right path is. 80,000 hours (<http://80000hours.org>; I am not affiliated) is
a charity that's set themselves up to research and give career guidance for
people who want to maximize their positive impact. They will probably give a
better answer than StackOverflow.

~~~
kevinconroy
Perhaps, but there's a dramatic difference in the psychological reward that
one gets working for a charity verse supporting one. There are lots of tech
savvy non-profits that need top-notch tech talent to help them get better,
faster, stronger. Non-profits can't hire teams of 50+ programmers. Usually
it's 1-10 people that move fast and ship constantly. Although it's not right
for everyone to do this, they do need some people to do this. See my other
comment with links.

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kevinconroy
There are lots of tech-savvy non-profits that need programmers. Here are a
few:

GlobalGiving - [http://www.globalgiving.org/aboutus/jobs/software-
engineer-f...](http://www.globalgiving.org/aboutus/jobs/software-engineer-for-
good.html)

DonorsChoose.org - <http://www.donorschoose.org/blog/category/job-
opportunities/>

Kiva - <http://www.kiva.org/jobs>

charity:water - <http://www.charitywater.org/about/jobs.php>

Volunteer Match - <http://www.volunteermatch.org/careers/>

And thousands more at <http://www.idealist.org/>

~~~
jpatokal
The original poster is a mathematician, not a programmer.

~~~
kevinconroy
Most of these non-profits either have or are hiring data scientists.

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peripetylabs
He or she would probably enjoy _applied_ mathematics. They could work at a
public health establishment as a biostatistician, for example, preventing the
spread of illness; or controlling quality in pharmaceutical manufacturing; or
designing infrastructure like highways to avoid congestion... Mathematics has
applications everywhere.

My advice would be to stay in academia -- with a PhD and 4 years of experience
they are overqualified -- but search out inter-disciplinary programs,
especially in computing. Collaborating with computer scientists (or becoming
one) is a sure bet.

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ExpiredLink
US universities need to re-think the 'publish or perish' dogma. It produces a
lot of uninteresting papers and a lot of discontinued academic careers. The
benefit of this system (presumably separating the wheat from the chaff) is
questionable.

~~~
_delirium
I'm not sure it's really being thought through so much as an emergent effect
of the drive towards metrics. Universities want to (or are pressured to)
quantify their researchers' productivity, which results in things such as
impact factors, h-indices, number of papers in top-tier conferences/journals,
and so on. Researchers then have to maximize these metrics.

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krutulis
_what careers which make a positive contribution to society might be open to
academic mathematicians who want to change careers?_

Perhaps a few mathematicians might join the fight against innumeracy among
programmers?

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guylhem
The question is incomplete ("contributing something positive or at least not
actively doing harm").

Please define "good".

To me, good is where you find something interesting and worth doing.

Financial speculation makes the market more liquid and reduce the spread. You
say you find that interesting. I would then call that "good".

If it matches your definition of good, you may want to engage in that.

If it does not match your definition of good, look at international finance,
then international macroeconomics - you will see many people are actively
looking to find ways to mitigate the effects of speculation.

Also, there are some interesting side problems where your mathematical skills
could be applied (should monetary policy be used in a discretionary way?) for
similar problems (if you define a stable economy as a "good" thing)

~~~
mseebach
It's not hard to see where it comes from, but intelligent people should be
able to see the financial sector with a bit more nuance than knee-jerk hatred.
There are many good reasons not to enjoy working there, but hand-wavy self-
certain assertions that everything that goes on there lands somewhere between
net negative and plain evil is just disingenuous.

Go there, _learn about it_ , make some money while you're at it. Leave if you
don't like it - it's not a sect.

~~~
jberryman
Where do you read "knee-jerk hatred"? The poster doesn't justify his opinion
of finance, but that's not really the point of his post.

~~~
mseebach
Sorry, in the comments to the answers.

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jnazario
this is sort of the same thing i went through, except without 4 years of
slogging through an academic position (i applied to two and achieved neither).
there are, i think, an untold number of Ph.D.s out there who, like me (and the
guy on SE), wound up not liking the realities of their field's practice but
enjoyed the study and material.

i changed fields, but for this guy on SE, who enjoys algorithms and complex
data, there are a wealth of openings right now to study all sorts of data in
fields to "do good", including genomic and life sciences, weather, and much
much more.

to anyone considering a Ph.D. in a field, i suggest you look beyond the
material and instead look at the day to day of the field you think you want to
get into (e.g. academic research) and train for it, and decide if you want to
do it. if you don't, consider still getting the Ph.D. and exploring other
things to do with it. i'll be honest, i don't think anyone would have given me
the time of day in a new field without my Ph.D., so even if you change fields
radically you'll still get doors opened to you!

~~~
guylhem
Based on my personal experience, that's very true. A PhD is a highly valuable
credential - it proves you can create knowledge. It's more a way to look at
things that a certification.

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iProject
It seems to me, bearing in mind my numerous career changes, that honest self-
assessment is in order so that you can identify: 1) other (complementary or
divergent) strengths you have and 2) what intrinsic drives of yours could be
harnessed in a next career.

At times (for me) it has even been helpful to get professional career-
counseling to discover careers (or even avocations) whose shape and impact
have changed in preceding decade since I last looked at it. There are useful
psychological batteries for assessing the fit between fit/vocation that take
such assessment far beyond navel-gazing/tea-leaf-reading.

Another approach would be to involve yourself with an organization (vocation
or volunteer) with a project that appeals to your vision for a better world -
and _discover_ what roles beyond traditional mathematician you find you can
make a contribution to. Hope that's some help.

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actuary
I was in a similar boat, less than thrilled with both banking and academia.
The property/casualty actuarial field was a very good fit.

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Cieplak
<http://research.google.com/pubs/pub38331.html>

