However, if you’re trying to prove that mathematicians are known to have highly transferable skills, don’t cite a few famous people, I would expect that in any field. Cite companies hiring mathematicians with the intent on training them in a different area.
Finance firms seem to aggressively hire math talent from MIT, both as traders and quants (I considered it, but decided that I could probably do more good directly). I don’t know the numbers, but I know many good math folk, particularly from the high school math contest crowd, and most of them who are interested seem to get offers.
This isn’t enough to justify the proposal at all, but it’s definitely a point in favor. They also hire good people from other majors, but math seems to be in highest demand.
Actually, as soon as I posted this I thought about how MIRI does exactly this! But this is just one group, and we would need more data.
There’s no problem with suggesting a hypothesis based on a limited data set, but that’s not how the post reads. It sounds like it is making a definitive claim, but does not present the evidence to back this up.
Note that I wrote “Mathematicians who are motivated to learn these skills are well positioned to do so,” which is a weaker claim than that mathematicians are known to have highly transferable skills. I’m fairly confident that what I said is true in most cases, but this is based on a lot of tacit knowledge, which is difficult to externalize.
Interesting idea.
However, if you’re trying to prove that mathematicians are known to have highly transferable skills, don’t cite a few famous people, I would expect that in any field. Cite companies hiring mathematicians with the intent on training them in a different area.
Finance firms seem to aggressively hire math talent from MIT, both as traders and quants (I considered it, but decided that I could probably do more good directly). I don’t know the numbers, but I know many good math folk, particularly from the high school math contest crowd, and most of them who are interested seem to get offers.
This isn’t enough to justify the proposal at all, but it’s definitely a point in favor. They also hire good people from other majors, but math seems to be in highest demand.
As I said, these are very preliminary thoughts. I don’t yet have access to such data, and would welcome pointers to possible sources.
Actually, as soon as I posted this I thought about how MIRI does exactly this! But this is just one group, and we would need more data.
There’s no problem with suggesting a hypothesis based on a limited data set, but that’s not how the post reads. It sounds like it is making a definitive claim, but does not present the evidence to back this up.
Of course, much of what MIRI hires mathematicians for is to do mathematics research.
There’s a disclaimer at the beginning :-).
Note that I wrote “Mathematicians who are motivated to learn these skills are well positioned to do so,” which is a weaker claim than that mathematicians are known to have highly transferable skills. I’m fairly confident that what I said is true in most cases, but this is based on a lot of tacit knowledge, which is difficult to externalize.