• Question: i want to be a mathematician .....in 3 years what should i take for my gcses//thankyou

    Asked by zmzmzm to Allan, Diva, Harriet, Nathan on 4 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Diva Amon

      Diva Amon answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      Hey zmzmzm,

      That’s a great aspiration to have! I think you should definitely do Mathematics, Further Mathematics and Statistics, plus all the other compulsory subjects like English Language and English Literature. Maybe Physics would be good too!

    • Photo: Allan Pang

      Allan Pang answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      I didn’t take secondary education here in UK, so I am not really very informed how do you do this GCSE.

      But I think the most rationale subject to take is mathematics. You might also want to take some other sciences such as chemistry and physics – which are also heavy on numbers and maths, it might spark an interest in there.

      Just a note though, most mathematicians perform their experiments on boards, papers or computers. Not much wet labs. If you like to do some wet labs, probably biology or chemistry route is a good choice. I do the best of both worlds, which is biochemistry. And that has so many experimental work in the lab!

    • Photo: Nathan Langford

      Nathan Langford answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      Hi zmzmzm,

      I would add one piece of advice to Diva’s. Obviously, you will probably want to study all the main mathematics subjects, but as Diva hinted at, I think it’s probably a really good idea to keep yourself just a bit of a range of interests too. There are a a few main reasons for this:

      1) Firstly, whichever subject you choose to specialise in, I think it’s really helpful for your general sanity to study some subjects outside your speciality. For example, apart from physics, I also did maths, chemistry, German and music at university.

      2) As you progress through high school and then university, you’ll probably find new things that interest you. Now, if you love maths, then these will probably lead you further on down the maths path, but studying a few different subjects may make you more flexible if you find something that makes you want to change directions. And even if you don’t want to change directions completely, knowing some other subjects can also help to give you a different perspective on your main interest.

      3) Mathematicians obviously spend a lot of time thinking about maths, but many of them also spend a lot of time thinking about how to use their maths in other areas. For example, you learn a lot of maths in physics too, but you also learn there a different way to apply that knowledge. So mathematicians can often be really valuable when studying other subject areas, but the difficult is finding mathematicians that understand those subjects well enough to know how to apply their maths. So learning some other subjects too can be a real advantage when trying to think about how to use your maths knowledge – and that could make what you end up studying more interesting and might give you an edge when you’re looking for a job too. For example, you could end up crossing over into computational biology, or numerical quantum chemistry, or mathematical physics (and the list goes on). And remember that this might be particularly important if you end up deciding not to be a university academic, but work as a mathematician in industry somewhere.

      (Whichever way you go, the English skills will also be really important to help you communicate with other people – remember you won’t only have to talk with other mathematicians!)

      At the end of the day, do what you enjoy and love, because you’ll do well at them. If you end up missing out on something you need to know later, you can catch that up if you need to. And if you can study a bit of a range of things too, then that will make you a more well-rounded person and that’s never a bad thing…

      Cheers,
      Nathan.

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