This text critiques the Society for Industrial and Utilized Arithmetic (SIAM)’s Report on Arithmetic in Business (MII) 2012 which surveys the usage of arithmetic in business and the roles taken by current Ph.D.’s in arithmetic, utilized arithmetic, statistics, biostatistics, and a few associated mathematical fields. This text is a follow-up to What’s Actually Scorching in STEM jobs?
The important thing findings of the SIAM report are:
- Roughly half of all mathematical scientists employed into enterprise and business are statisticians. The second-largest group by educational specialty is utilized arithmetic.
- By far the strongest employers of mathematicians are the finance and insurance coverage sector and the pharmaceutical/medical machine sector. Pharmaceutical hires are nearly completely statisticians, whereas within the monetary sector the vast majority of the hires are mathematicians.
- As reported in 1996, nearly not one of the mathematicians have “arithmetic” of their job title. Against this, the title of statisticians typically refers to their specialty.
- The job satisfaction of the survey respondents was fairly excessive, with almost 90 % reporting satisfaction with their compensation and advantages. Median pay for the respondents was about $100,000 for each women and men.
- In comparison with the 1996 survey, fewer graduates reported “modeling and simulation” as an necessary educational specialty for his or her jobs, and extra reported “statistics.”
- Nonetheless, in a considerably contradictory discovering, a very powerful merchandise evaluated in efficiency critiques was reported to be mathematical fashions.
- Programming and pc abilities proceed to be a very powerful technical ability that new hires carry to their jobs.
The majority of the forty-eight web page report ( an Adobe Acrobat PDF model is out there on the SIAM site) consists of a dialogue of eight developments and eighteen case research in the usage of arithmetic in business. In quite a few methods the developments and case research can create a relatively completely different impression than the outcomes of the survey above.
The report lists eight developments:
- Enterprise Analytics
- Mathematical Finance
- Techniques Biology
- Oil Discovery and Extraction
- Manufacturing
- Communications and Transportation
- Modeling Complicated Techniques
- Laptop Techniques, Software program, and Info Expertise
Remember that a development could be a prediction — a hypothesis — of what is going to occur sooner or later. In truth, solely the primary “development” is clearly supported by the outcomes of the SIAM report’s precise survey of current Ph.D. recipients who’ve gone into business. The opposite classes are extraordinarily uncommon; the case research are fairly uncommon varieties of business tasks (e.g. IBM’s Watson, Boeing’s currently-grounded Dreamliner, and HP Labs memristor). Certainly, as mentioned under, it’s seemingly that mathematical finance jobs are fairly uncommon.
To check the report’s developments with the present job market, I checked out job listings on the favored LinkedIn job board “in or close to the USA” on Sunday, Feb 3, 2012.
First, to ascertain the context (normalize the information), I looked for job posts with a variety of widespread technical and enterprise phrases and phrases.
Be aware: A “quoted phrase” means than LinkedIn looked for an actual match to the phrase. The phrases quoted phrase with out enclosing quotes imply LinkedIn looked for job posts with the phrases quoted and phrase someplace within the publish. LinkedIn treats hyphens as areas in order that “finite aspect” matches each “finite aspect” and “finite-element”. The searches are usually not case delicate. STEM is an abbreviation for Science, Expertise, Engineering, and Arithmetic.
Phrase/Phrase Variety of Job Posts Notes Database SQL 11,677 (Structured Question Language for databases) database 13,541 Programming Languages java 8,522 C++ 6,103 C# 4,945 Python 3,372 Perl 3.157 PHP 2,717 Javascript 6,171 (not the identical as java) Kinds of STEM Employees "software program engineer" 4,485 programmer 1,256 software program engineer 13,402 electrical engineer 3,871 "electrical engineer" 633 mechanical engineer 3,155 "mechanical engineer" 641 chemical engineer 1,128 "chemical engineer" 83 scientist 964 (largely biotech and a few information scientist) petroleum engineer 331 "petroleum engineer" 15 aerospace engineer 718 "aerospace engineer" 7 chemist 136 biologist 29 Credentials PHD 2,303 doctorate 523 Bachelors 9,995 "Bachelors Diploma" 20,633 Masters 5,590 "Masters Diploma" 3,015 "Grasp's diploma" 3,743 MBA 6,829 (abbreviation for Grasp of Enterprise Administration) CPA 5,939 (abbreviation for Licensed Public Accountant) JD 1,683 (abbreviation for Juris Physician -- lawyer) MD 2,973 (abbreviation for Medical Physician -- a number of non-doctors turned up on this search) Statistics statistics 4,233 statistician 134 SAS 2,485 insurance coverage SAS 328 advertising SAS 774 pharmaceutical SAS 269 medical SAS 402 finance SAS 501 (solely a handful are quantitative finance jobs "quants") "actual property" SAS 26 biotechnology SAS 144 aerospace SAS 16 "market analysis" SAS 83 economics SAS 408 econometrics SAS 83 coverage SAS 190 "coverage maker" SAS 14 sign processing SAS 7 "statistical programmer" 50 statistical programmer 157 SPSS 633 "R programming" 14 stochastic 96 stochastic calculus 15 (all quant -- quantitative finance -- jobs) Insurance coverage insurance coverage 20,515 insurance coverage analyst 1,682 insurance coverage MBA 951 Insurance coverage and Statistics actuary 165 actuarial 654 insurance coverage statistics 481 insurance coverage statistician 6 insurance coverage "machine studying" 27 insurance coverage statistical 477 insurance coverage SAS 328 Excessive Faculty and Faculty Math geometry 240 trigonometry 74 algebra 181 calculus 53 theorem 8 "differential equation" 1 (quant job)
Enterprise Analytics
The important thing phrases and phrases from this development retrieved many job posts — a number of thousand in truth.
enterprise analytics 6,637 "enterprise analytics" 3,347 analytics 9,041 information pushed 6,913 "information pushed" 1,602 (this may match data-driven additionally) predictive analytics 1,121 "predictive analytics" 629 Markov 11 Markov choice course of 1 (Software program Architect - Information Analytics (Healthcare), a number of statistics jargon, job for main multinational firm in India) "Markov choice course of" 0
Mathematical Finance
This turned up only a few job posts — about 100. Whereas these jobs get a number of publicity and reportedly pay very effectively by most individuals’s requirements, they really seem like fairly uncommon.
mathematical finance 9 quantitative finance 28 monetary engineering 44 monetary engineer 8 algorithmic buying and selling 35 high-frequency buying and selling 29
Techniques Biology
The SIAM report incorporates a case research on this part of a protein folding analysis firm funded by David Shaw (of D.E. Shaw hedge fund fame) for instance of business curiosity on this space. In truth, that is a particularly distinctive case.
"methods biology" 16 "molecular dynamics" 9 "molecular dynamics simulation" 1 (R&D Engineer(TCAD) at chip design software program firm in SF Bay Space, not a biology job) "whole-patient mannequin" 0
Oil Discovery and Estimation
The SIAM report spends a number of pages on basin modeling for oil and gasoline discovery. No less than based mostly on job posts on LinkedIn, this seems to be a real business exercise, however fairly uncommon.
basin mannequin 29 (largely at oil and pure gasoline corporations) "fluid-flow mannequin" 2 (each security evaluation at a nuclear energy plant, not basin modeling) fluid move mannequin 29 (5 for oil corporations, 1 a post-doc on "fracking", others non-oil)
Manufacturing
This development/class really turned up about 800 job posts, nonetheless not very giant and far lower than enterprise analytics.
multidisciplinary design optimization 1 (at a serious automotive firm) "computational fluid dynamics" 80 "finite aspect evaluation" 197 robotics 301 robotic 191 volumetric error compensation 0 linear program 1 linear programming 26
Communications and Transportation
This class largely mentioned load balancing for pc networks. Curiously, there was no point out of video compression the place there have been dramatic advances making possible extensively used companies comparable to Netflix, YouTube, and Skype.
"probabilistic algorithm" 1
"probabilistic algorithms" 1 (similar as earlier search)
"combinatorial optimization" 10
"load balancing" 694 (many community engineer positions -- largely non-mathematical)
"load balancing" arithmetic 12
"load balancing" statistics 10
"load balancing" chance 1
"load balancing" algebra 3 (3D graphics accelerator chip design at a serious semiconductor firm)
"load balancing" trigonometry 0
"load balancing" calculus 3 (similar three as algebra above)
"load balancing" matlab 2 (each at MathWorks which makes MATLAB)
"graph concept" 16
"discrete arithmetic" 5
"operations analysis" 406
"operations analysis" matlab 31 (many information scientist/enterprise analytics kind jobs, 1 quant)
"operations analysis" SAS 132 (many information scientist/enterprise analytics jobs)
"operations analysis" analytics 178 ('nuff stated)
"operations analysis" "large information" 31
"operations analysis" finance 95
The operations analysis jobs overlap closely with enterprise analytics/information science. Only some jobs that point out “load balancing” seem to have excessive mathematical content material.
Modeling Complicated Techniques
This development/class turned up solely a small variety of jobs. The “biometrics” jobs seem to fall into the class of well being/medical statistics. Only some are algorithms for fingerprint recognition, face recognition, and many others.
"Modeling Complicated Techniques" 4 "nonlinear dynamics" 2 "Nonlinear dynamical methods" 1 (R&D Fluid Mechanics) "mathematical modeling" 65 "complicated methods engineering" 4 biometrics 122 (one way or the other on this class, most of those appeared to be biostatistics jobs)
Laptop Techniques, Software program, and Info Expertise
This class included fairly quite a few subjects that most likely ought to be included underneath “enterprise analytics”.
"sample recognition" 74 "pc imaginative and prescient" 141 "pure language processing" 289 (analytics/large information jobs typically) "data retrieval" 411 (analytics/large information jobs typically) "machine studying" 1017 (analytics/large information jobs typically)
The SIAM Report on Arithmetic in Business 2012 confirms a really robust present-day business curiosity in statistics, primarily statistical evaluation of enterprise and typically medical/well being information. Seven of the eight developments recognized within the report are literally relatively speculative. Precise demand immediately in these areas seems to be fairly small. A lot of the case research are usually not consultant of the overwhelming majority of business jobs that make the most of arithmetic to a big diploma. Curiously the report says little about a number of areas the place there’s widespread business use of arithmetic: video compression (e.g. YouTube, Netflix, Skype, and many others.), speech recognition (these annoying assist strains), the worldwide positioning system, and pc graphics for video games and video results. It spends a stunning period of time on mathematical finance, a lot of which is relatively doubtful and the place there are literally few jobs, relatively than emphasizing the numerous actual advances and even real breakthroughs (in video compression in 2003) within the sensible use of arithmetic, typically together with immediately’s highly effective computer systems.
It’s price noting that the precise demand for employees with robust mathematical abilities based mostly on the LinkedIn job postings just isn’t notably excessive. In response to the Nationwide Science Basis, the US alone produced about 33,000 Ph.D’s in science and engineering in 2009. This consists of nearly 8,000 biologists, a lot of whom are skilled in statistics for analyzing their experiments or discipline observations, over 1,700 pc science PhD’s, 1,400 Math PhDs, over 4,000 PHD’s within the bodily sciences — together with nearly 1,600 physicists. America produced 7,862 Ph.D.’s in Engineering in 2009. A lot of the jobs listed on LinkedIn use arithmetic taught within the first two years of a robust science and/or engineering program at a university or college.
© 2013 John F. McGowan
In regards to the Creator
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves issues utilizing arithmetic and mathematical software program, together with growing video compression and speech recognition applied sciences. He has intensive expertise growing software program in C, C++, Visible Primary, Mathematica, MATLAB, and lots of different programming languages. He’s most likely greatest recognized for his AVI Overview, an Web FAQ (Ceaselessly Requested Questions) on the Microsoft AVI (Audio Video Interleave) file format. He has labored as a contractor at NASA Ames Analysis Middle concerned within the analysis and growth of picture and video processing algorithms and know-how. He has revealed articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the invention of methane on Mars), and low-cost entry to house. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the College of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Expertise (Caltech). He will be reached at [email protected].
