*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 3, Issue 11 Mar. 22, 1995 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. Please, direct submissions and questions to Wendy Brunzie brunzie@math.montana.edu , editor for the month of March. Next issue: Wednesday, 29 March, 1995. February Editor: Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu March Editor: Wendy Brunzie brunzie@math.montana.edu April Editor: Kevin Madigan madigan@math.nwu.edu To subscribe: Contact Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Back issues and other information are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ms.uky.edu, in pub3/mailing.lists/ymn-list. Or connect to the YMN homepage on the WWW, the URL: http://math34.gatech.edu:8080/YMN/ymn.html The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the administrative board or membership of the Young Mathematicians' Network. The editorial policy of this newsletter is to encourage discussion of issues, and facilitate the dissemination of information, relevant to the concerns of young mathematicians. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Editor's Notes. 2 The Classifieds. 3 Letters to the Editor. 4 Interview with Jim Phillips at Boeing. 5 Details from a Real Interview. 6 Jokes to the Editor. 7 Closing Credits _______________________________________________________________ Item #1 Editor's notes: Hey, there, folks. Well, Spring Break is over in Montana, so we might be getting some snow pretty soon. I trust you all are enjoying your own versions of Spring elsewhere. This issue continues the March theme: how to convert a math Ph.D. into a marketable commodity in industry. The premise is that with 1000 or so un- or underemployed mathematicians coming out each year, some large percentage of us will have to find gainful employment elsewhere. This issue and the next contain interviews with industry mathematicians with *their* advice to young mathematicians looking to work in industry in the next few years. Yeah, I hear ya: "What does this lame academic think she's going to accomplish by all this?" I really don't know, exactly, but what I'm hoping is that by bringing up the topic and looking at the problem from different viewpoints, people will be better equipped to make their plans. My thanks to all the contributers of this issue, especially Jim Phillips at Boeing, whose answers to the slightly skew-whiff set of questions I sent him show that he gave them some thought and would genuinely like to help solve this real problem, too. Finally, I would like to thank those who sent in their jokes. This shows true courage. Here's my favorite: Q: "How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb?" A: "One, but 600 applied for the job." - Wendy Brunzie Editor of the Month brunzie@math.montana.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 The Classifieds I am planning to attend the Applied Probability Group Conference to be held June 14-16, 1995 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. I will stay in the conference hotel and am looking for a female roommate to share the costs of the room. In order to control my own costs and to help others, I would like to run a roommate matching service for this meeting. Please e-mail me with your requests at adougher@newton.colorado.edu. Thank you. -Anne M. Dougherty ******************************************** Project NExT: NEW JOBS, NEW RESPONSIBILITIES, NEW IDEAS Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) is a program for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences who are interested in improving the teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics. Faculty who are just beginning or just completing their first year of full-time teaching at the college/university level are invited to apply to become Project NExT Fellows. The first event for the 1995-1996 Fellows will be a Workshop, August 3-5, 1995, just prior to the Summer Joint Mathematics Meetings (the MATHFEST) in Burlington, Vermont. At this Workshop, Fellows will explore and discuss issues of special relevance to beginning faculty, including: Calculus and pre-calculus reform Alternative methods of teaching and assessment Using technology in the classroom Lessons from pedagogical research The faculty member as teacher and scholar The Fellows will also have an opportunity to meet and interact with the first group of Fellows, who began the program in August, 1994. Invited speakers include: Kenneth Ross, University of Oregon, President, MAA, Joseph Gallian, University of Minnesota-Duluth, Sharon Ross, DeKalb College, Abdulalim Shabazz, Clark Atlanta University. Following the Workshop, Project NExT Fellows will attend the summer Joint Mathematics Meetings (the MATHFEST) August 6-8, 1995, partici- pating in all the opportunities of that meeting, and choose among special short courses on issues in teaching and learning collegiate mathematics, including the pedagogical uses of graphing calculators and computers. During the following year, Project NExT Fellows will participate in: -A network that links Project NExT Fellows with one another and with distinguished teachers of mathematics, -Special events at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Orlando in January, 1996, -A Workshop in the summer of 1996. SUPPORT: Sixty Project NExT Fellows will be selected for the 1995-1996 year. Funding for room and board at the Workshop in Vermont and for the short courses at the 1995 MATHFEST will be provided by a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. Institutions employing the Project NExT Fellows are expected to provide financial assistance. Limited funds are available to assist those institutions that are unable to afford full or partial support. TO APPLY: Send the application form and chair's letter of support by April 28, 1995, to the address given below. Applications received after that date will be considered until all spaces are filled. Applicants will be notified by June 1, 1995, whether they have been accepted as Project NExT Fellows. Send applications and other inquiries to: James R. C. Leitzel, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, P.O. Box 880323, Lincoln, NE 68588-0323 Phone: 402-472-7232, FAX: 402-472-8466, e-mail: jimleitz@unlinfo.unl.edu) [Project NExT is sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America with support from the Exxon Education Foundation.] ______________________________________________________________ Item #2 Letters to the Editor Could you be a bit more careful with LaTeX stuff next time? Personally, I'd prefer it to not be in the CYM at all - I like to be able to read my mail through my mail reader, rather than having to go run it through something else - but if you do put it in the CYM, please be careful making sure that it comes out right. In the project NExT thing that you included, you cut off the first line (the \documentstyle{article}, or whatever), and introduced a whole lot of carriage returns, which completely screwed up the article, making TeX think that things that were supposed to be comments weren't and causing it to insert paragraph breaks everywhere, so it wasn't any more readable after I TeXed it than before! Also, I wish that there were some global 'CYM-editor' e-mail address, so that I didn't have to look up the current editor each time that I want to send e-mail about the CYM. I can't think of any good reason for not having a global address - seems like it would make life easier for the non-editors and no harder for the editors. david carlton carlton@math.mit.edu ******************************************** I just wanted to say thanks for the information about alternate housing in the Hartford area. I stayed at the Atlantic Inn one night, which at $40 was much less than the Marriott! So I appreciated your (Ed Aboufadel's) checking out the scene for everyone. Aimee Johnson ********************************************** I've assembled a set of links to online resources concerning the math job market which members of the YMN may find interesting. The web site is http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~gdavis/policy/jobmarket.html Geoff Davis Math Department Dartmouth College gdavis@cs.dartmouth.edu http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~gdavis ______________________________________________________________ Item #3 An E-mail Interview with Jim Phillips at Boeing. Questions to Jim Phillips These are questions that young mathematicians, some applied, some pure, would like to ask someone in your position. 1. If you were beginning graduate school in mathematics today, what courses would you take to be as valuable as possible in the job market a few years from now? I find this difficult to answer without talking about a complete curriculum, and I'm not informed enough to lay such a thing out. A Ph.D. going into industry needs breadth (a good foundation that gives him/her the capacity to dig into a variety of areas of mathematics, and to "think mathematically") and depth in SOME area. In general, most graduate programs provide both, between preparing students for qualifying or prelim exams, and the Ph.D. work itself. Beyond that, one needs to develop an understanding of where applied problems come from, and how one can get a grip on them and solve them. If you knew you were going into a particular industry, it would be easier to say what to take to accomplish this. Lacking that foresight, some solid courses in something like engineering physics and mathematical modeling would be desirable. To learn more about common tools to use, a good numerical analysis foundation is a must. Slightly (but not much) behind this, I would list optimization and statistics. Since most physical based problems start with a PDE (or at least an ODE), some good background in those is most desirable. Finally, some background in scientific computing issues (e.g., basics of data structures, solving large scale problems on computers) is highly desirable. I realize that even this basic list is a long one. One implication of it is that it is hard to take courses in a large number of these things if your primary interest area does not have a large overlap with them. 2. What are the mathematical tools that you use most? What are the things I should be getting familiar with? Is there a particular computer language or skill that is absolutely necessary in a new hire? In the environment my group is in at Boeing, numerical analysis is probably the toolbag used most. I listed desirable "things to get familiar with" in 1. above. There is no particular computer language or skill that is an "absolute" necessity. The overall requirement, however, is that you have experience using modern computing tools to solve non-trivial problems. That might be done in different contexts, but the most common one today (from my perspective) is a Unix environment, and experience with both "C" and Fortran. Someone with a reasonable computing background can generally pick up other computing skills as needed. 3. Suppose you are talking to a brilliant, new math Ph.D. with a "pure" background who really wants to get a job in industry in the next year or so. What minimal re-education path would you suggest? Find a way to get involved in some real world problem solving, then work your tail off to fill in the background you need to solve the problems at hand. A post-doc at a national lab or industry would be one such possibility. Another possibility if you are at or near a university: start spending time talking to colleagues in engineering or the sciences, and get involved (by volunteering, if necessary) in solving the mathematics-related problems that come up in their research. While you are in limbo before finding such a position, work you way through some good books or journals that focus on engineering or physics applications, then develop computer tools (mathematical models, algorithms, computer program) to re-solve some of the problems discussed there-in. Of course, if you are at a university, you can also sit in on courses and seminars that are helpful, too. But I think the key thing is: Get involved in problem solving. Industrial mathematics is neither a spectator sport nor one that you can experience by reading books or understanding more theoretical mathematics. 4. How many Ph.D.'s from mathematics are in your employ? How many statisticians? Physicists? PhDs: Math, 33; Statistics, 8; Physics, 2; Engineering, 6. MS: 29 total. 5. How many hours per week does the average industrial mathematician work? 40 is the standard expectation. Many work more, either because that is their professional style, or perhaps because they are carrying their work further on their own so they can get a paper or conference presentation from it. 6. How is the work structured? Do they just hand you a project and say, "This is your baby; get it done in 10 weeks?" Or do you always work in a group? How big are these groups? Is there always a deadline, or do some groups work on a more open-ended timetable? There is a great deal of variety here. I think that it is accurate to say that most mathematicians in industry are part of groups dominated by folks with engineering or science backgrounds. As such, the mathematician is part of a team working on a project of interest to their employer. The "mathematical part" is generally thoroughly entwined with the other issues; it cannot be easily separated. In particular, it is rare that the mathematician will be handed a problem, sent off to solve it, and asked to bring back a solution on a platter. (When that does happen, the experienced mathematician will immediately start asking questions, because he/she will immediately suspect that the problem they were asked to solve is not the REAL problem that needs solving.) A team working on any particular problem may vary from one to perhaps six or eight. There is often a hard deadline; it depends on whether the problem under consideration is part of a schedule driven project (e.g., getting a new product to market by a target date), or whether it is part of longer term research and development. In the environment I am in, the mathematicians often are working as consultants around the company. Their customers may contract to have the mathematician support them or their project at, say, a half-time level for a given period of weeks or months. Whether the support is continued beyond that depends on the state of the project and the need for further mathematical help with it. 7. How do you find the mathematicians you hire? Is there a bulletin board where openings are posted? Unfortunately, we have not been able to hire any for about 4 years due to the recession in the industry. However, our usual sources of advertising positions are ads in SIAM News, and announcements to e-mail distribution lists such as NA-Net, a network of people interested in numerical analysis issues. (Does the Young Mathematicians network list such openings in your newsletter?) 8. Suppose you are looking to hire an expert in P.D.E's and after taking a look at the market and realizing you have a hundred people to choose from, you start thinking about what other attributes you want this person to have. What's on that list? Experience in, and a real interest in, solving real world problems. Ability to interact with people and work in teams. Good communication skills, both verbal and writing. Mathematical breadth, with depth in the PDE area (since that is what you hypothesize that I am looking for). The depth would include knowledge and experience in solving non-trivial PDE problems numerically, and a good understanding of some class of physical problems (e.g., fluid dynamics or electromagnetics) that gives rise to PDEs. 9. If you could form your own applied science department to train future employees, what would you put on the curriculum? This gets back to question 1., or at least my answer to it. That is really a tough question, because it is so tempting to list every theoretical and applied area that one might use in his/her career. But in actuality, the details of what one takes formally are not as important as gaining the breadth overall, and depth in one area that I mentioned before. After that, the interest in, and experience with, solving real world problems, and the attitude toward real world problem solving that one brings to the job, outweigh specific curriculum requirements. Finally, if I were forming the department, the faculty hired would all recognize that their graduates can have interesting and fruitful careers in non-academic settings, and that such careers are in no way second class or less desirable than academic careers. They are simply a second career option. [Ed.- I collected these interview questions from various young mathematicians. If you can think of some better ones, please let me know. - W.B.] _______________________________________________________________ Item #4 Details from a Real Interview. Hello, again! After a lengthy haitus, your "pest from the midwest" is back with some information from the non-academic front which might appeal to some of our readers. As the academic job picture is the next best thing to hopeless, I'm also "trolling the waters" for potential non-academic employment. Last year in e-math there was a posting for the company mentioned below; a colleague of mine at Bradley forwarded this e-mail message to me from a friend of his who interviewed with that company. I'm hoping it will give job seekers an idea as to what a non- academic employer might be looking for. Happy reading, and send me any comments you have....I enjoy hearing from our readers!! Take care, Kevin Charlwood, Bradley University e-mail: kec1@bradley.bradley.edu "My friend recently received his MA from Oregon and is now job hunting. He sent me a copy of some of the questions he has been asked. I am forwarding these questions to our group. Let's see if we have any marketable skills. "`Here are some of the (interesting) questions I was asked in my job interveiws. Most (all?) of the following questions were asked in my interview with Parametric Technology Corporation, a Boston-based firm which produced programs for computer- assisted design & manufacturing. Hence, most of the questions have a geometric ring to them. (By the way, this is *not* the company I accepted a job with.) * Imagine a right pyramid with rectangular base. Let a and b be the lengths of the sides of the base, with a b. Suppose that each of the planes defining the "sides" of the pyramid is translated "outward" (i.e. away from the center of the pyramid) by a fixed amount \delta. What is the shape of the resulting object? ** How many common tangent lines might two circles have? Describe geometrically the various cases where they have 0 common tangents, 1 common tangent, ... etc. *** Given a (nonconvex) polygon in R^2, defined by a sequence of points (the vertices), and given two points A and B on the perimeter of the polygon, describe an algorithm to determine the shortest path from A to B in the interior of the polygon. [Presumably, this arises in manufacturing, and the polygon represents the "space" in which the computer can move some tool, and this tool must be moved from A to B.] **** Given a tetrahedron (in 3-space) and a direction vector, describe an algorithm to determine which (if any) edges of the tetrahedron are "hidden." I.e., imagine that you view the tetrahedron from the direction of the vector, which edges can you *not* see? ***** Given a torus in 3-space, defined by a center point, axis direction, minor radius r, and major radius R; and also a point in 3-space, find an algorithm to compute the distance from the point to the torus. Now, write this algorithm as a program in C. ****** Given an m by n matrix whose entries are all 0, 1, or -1, describe an algorithm for converting this into a matrix whose entries are all 0 or 1, by multiplying rows and columns by -1. If it is not possible to do so, your algorithm should say so. ******* What is NP? (simple definition. Nothing clever here).'" - Submitted by Kevin Charlwood _____________________________________________________________ Item #5 Jokes to the Editor 1. The first mathematician says, "It's obvious." Three hours later, the second mathematician says, "Of course, yes, it's obvious!" 2. An engineer wakes up to find a fire in his apartment. He quickly fills a bucket with water and puts out the fire and goes back to bed. A physicist wakes up to find a fire in his apartment. He goes to his desk and figures out exactly how much water is required to put out the fire, measures it into a bucket, puts out the fire and goes to bed. A mathematician wakes up to find a fire in his apartment. He goes to his desk and proves that there is a solution and goes to bed. Benjamin Shults Dept. of Math. Univ. of Texas at Austin Anyone care to picture Windows '95 or "Bob" Airlines? If Operating Systems Ran Airlines.... DOS Airlines Passengers are handed maps, compasses, rulers, pencils, and an airplane manual (shrink wrapped) as they enter the plane.They have to figure out how to get the plane to wherever they want to go. Some succeed very well. Others crash, but they shouldn't have been messing around with airplanes anyway. MacIntosh Airlines All the stewards, stewardesses, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look the same, act the same, and talk the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are told you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without you having to know, so just shut up. OS/2 Airlines If you succeed in getting on board the plane and the plane succeeds in getting off the ground, you have a wonderful trip... Windows Airlines The airport terminal is nice and colorful, with friendly stewards and stewardesses, easy access to the plane, and an uneventful takeoff...then the plane blows up without any warning whatsoever. NT Airlines Everyone marches out on the runway, says the password in unison, and forms the outline of a plane. Then they all sit down and make a whooshing sound like they're flying. UNIX Airlines Everyone brings one piece of the plane with them when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they are building. ___________________________________ | Charlie Klumpp MI/FREH | Business Analyst | | e-mail: cjklumpp@adpc.purdue.edu |____________________________________ HOW TO HUNT ELEPHANTS Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left. Professors of mathematics prove the existence of at least one elephant and leave the capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for one of their graduate students. Computer scientists hunt elephants using algorithm A: 1. Go to Africa 2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope 3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately East and West. 4. During each traverse a. Catch each animal seen b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant c. Stop when a match is detected. Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate. Engineers hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant. Economists don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid enough they will hunt themselves. Statisticians hunt the first animal they see N times and call it an elephant Consultants don't hunt elephants, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those who do. Operations research consultants can measure the correlation of hat size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant hunting strategies, if someone else will identify the elephants. Politicians don't hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them. Lawyers don't hunt elephants, but they do follow the herds around arguing about who owns the droppings. Software lawyers will claim that they own an entire herd based on the look and feel of one dropping. When the Vice President of R&D tries to hunt elephants, his staff will try to ensure that all elephants are completely prehunted before he sees them. If the VP sees a nonprehunted elephant, the staff will (1) Compliment the vice president's keen eyesight and (2) enlarge itself to prevent any recurrence. Senior managers set broad elephant hunting policy based on the assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper voices. Quality assurance inspectors ignore the elephants and look for mistakes the other hunters made when they were packing the jeep. Salespeople don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens. Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant. Hardware salespeople catch rabbits, paint them gray and sell them as "desktop elephants." Mike R _______________________________________________________________ Item #7 Charles Yeomans cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead mwwinst@gcr.com Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu Emil Volcheck Emil.Volcheck@risc.uni-linz.ac.at Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu Vic Perera vicum@math.ohio-state.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Kevin Madigan madigan@math.nwu.edu Leigh Lunsford lunsford@math.uah.edu Steve Kennedy skennedy@mathcs.carleton.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu Silvia Heubach silvi@cinenet.net Bob Dobrow dobrow@cam.nist.gov Lyle Cochran lcochran@fresno.edu Kevin Charlwood kec1@bradley.bradley.edu Neil Calkin calkin@math.gatech.edu Wendy Brunzie brunzie@math.montana.edu Curtis Bennett cbennet@bgnet.bgsu.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues