PHd or Actuary!!

[badger]

No offense intended, but what makes you think that you're so much better than all of the other Ph.Ds that graduate each year, and that you'll end up at a "major research institution"?

1) Advice from multiple professors 2) Based on where others from the department end up. More specific to me: 3) I probably wouldn't. Like I said I've always been more likely to go into consulting than academia. I really dislike teaching. There's no way I'd go to a liberals arts school. but if I did my advisor has a reputation for helping his students get good jobs (academic jobs atleast).

[thenumberE]

Originally Posted by SirVLCIV

At one point I wanted to devote myself to the pursuit of a PhD in Mathematics: This is the reason I decided not to - everything I was interested in either A) has been done before, or B) I could find no real use for;

At 15, I independently (really!) invented the combination and binomial theorem after seeing Pascal's triangle for the first time; I saw that each diagonal added up to a Fibonacci number and wrote a formula for the nth fibonacci number using combinations (I used : as the operator; 5:3 was the same as 5C3, or 5!/(3!*2!)) Took me 6 hours on a Friday. Imagine my disappointment when I found out it was nothing new . Other crap I've wasted a lot of time on include negabase systems and a lot of recursive difference equations. Fun, but in the end, it's all been done before.

About eight months ago I got so excited when I recognized a pattern amongst the number of faces and vertices on a plain-tree-graph. Turns out I had discovered the handshake theorem. I just wasn't the FIRST one. What a bummer. This is probably why no one wants to discuss their research.

[TaggartTranscontinental]

Originally Posted by SirVLCIV

This is the reason I decided not to - everything I was interested in either A) has been done before

There was a guy who loved math and wanted to study it, but when in high school figured out that everthing had already been discovered. His name was Stefan Banach, have you heard about him? (if you haven't you shouldn't study math anyway)

[DoctorNo]

Originally Posted by badger

1) Advice from multiple professors 2) Based on where others from the department end up. More specific to me: 3) I probably wouldn't. Like I said I've always been more likely to go into consulting than academia. I really dislike teaching. There's no way I'd go to a liberals arts school. but if I did my advisor has a reputation for helping his students get good jobs (academic jobs atleast).

I admire your optimism. Assuming that you're correct, you'll most likely be just as good as an FSA (with a correspondingly-high salary). If you're really on the far right end of the normal distribution, salary surveys don't apply to you.

[badger]

I admire your optimism. Assuming that you're correct, you'll most likely be just as good as an FSA (with a correspondingly-high salary). If you're really on the far right end of the normal distribution, salary surveys don't apply to you.

Just to clarify, I feel like I have a good idea on what to expect for salary starting out (and remember that salary goes for about 6 years with no raises). As far as expecting tenure or a salary around $180k. That's much more unlikely, much.

[Westley]

Originally Posted by TaggartTranscontinental

There was a guy who loved math and wanted to study it, but when in high school figured out that everthing had already been discovered. His name was Stefan Banach, have you heard about him? (if you haven't you shouldn't study math anyway)

I haven't (but I don't study math, so it's ok) - care to fill me in?

[DW Simpson]

Originally Posted by TaggartTranscontinental

There was a guy who loved math and wanted to study it, but when in high school figured out that everthing had already been discovered. His name was Stefan Banach, have you heard about him? (if you haven't you shouldn't study math anyway)

http://www.polishwashington.com/prom...fan.banach.htm

Stefan Banach, Mathematician

Accomplishments: Founded the important modern mathematical field of functional analysis and made major contributions to the theory of topological vector spaces. In addition, he contributed to measure theory, integration, the theory of sets and orthogonal series.

...

According to one of his colleagues, Banach was very good in mathematics and natural sciences, but was not interested in anything else. He finished the Gymnasium in 1910 without distinction. As he felt that nothing new can be discovered in mathematics, he chose to study engineering at the Lwow Polytechnic (1910-1916).

[badger]

Another point of clarification: I did not say there's nothing left to be done. I'm not good enough to be some kind of theorist that works on finding new estimators or similar type work*. I'm more interested in applying models/ estimation techniques or combinations of techniques to answer interesting questions. When it comes to that, I feel like we've currently exhausted the data (sure you could do things a little different, but not different enough to get published). This won't always be the case. Better data and new estimation techniques will come along, but for now it's said.

*This work is much more similar to what I'd imagine a mathematics PhD does. I can have some confidence in where I'd start out because I'd be doing applied work. Very unlikely to end up at Yale or Harvard from here but also good chance of being at a Florida. The people who do econometrics or micro theory are swinging for the fences. They are always the best placements (last year: UPenn and Yale from here). They are also always the worst placements. I considered doing micro theory, but the risk was too great, IMO.

[TaggartTranscontinental]

Have you guys ever considered doing PhD in computer science? You can make it as mathematical as want to, and there are plenty of consulting opportunities everywhere.
Oh, and you get to start google after the third year in the program

[Mathsucks]

Originally Posted by SirVLCIV

At one point I wanted to devote myself to the pursuit of a PhD in Mathematics: This is the reason I decided not to - everything I was interested in either A) has been done before, or B) I could find no real use for;

At 15, I independently (really!) invented the combination and binomial theorem after seeing Pascal's triangle for the first time; I saw that each diagonal added up to a Fibonacci number and wrote a formula for the nth fibonacci number using combinations (I used : as the operator; 5:3 was the same as 5C3, or 5!/(3!*2!)) Took me 6 hours on a Friday. Imagine my disappointment when I found out it was nothing new . Other crap I've wasted a lot of time on include negabase systems and a lot of recursive difference equations. Fun, but in the end, it's all been done before.

Even if you did come up with pascal's triangle first , I doubt it would be acceptable for a phd in math. May be it could be an article in nonresearch magazines (such as AMS monthly). But the stuff should be considerably deeper not just new.
Shows tremendous talent though.