Page 7 - Careers in Mathematics

Academic: financial activity, as well as driving profitability and making
the business future fit.
A career in teaching mathematics at university or school is
ideal for someone who really loves the subject of Actuary:
mathematics. A university professor teaches mathematics and Actuaries assemble and analyse statistics to calculate
does research, developing new mathematics. Mathematics
probabilities of death, illness, injury, unemployment,
teachers introduce primary or secondary school learners to retirement and property loss and design insurance which is
the power and beauty of mathematics. There is a national
maintained on a sound financial basis. Actuarial studies are
shortage of teachers and university academics in all the quite challenging. Following a three or four-year degree at a
mathematical sciences (mathematics, mathematical statistics
university, you conclude your studies part time over a period
and computer science), so employment opportunities are of years through a professional body such as the Actuarial
plentiful.
Society of South Africa, while working at an insurance
Statistician: company.

The use of statistics has become widespread in almost every Astronomer/cosmologist:
st
area of human endeavor in the 21 century. Statisticians are in
Have you ever looked up at the sky at night and wondered
high demand. Statisticians design experiments and surveys,
where the stars come from? Or how big the universe is?
such as opinion polls, to predict patterns of behavior of large Cosmology is the study of the structure of the universe and
groups based on relatively small samples, analysing the
how it changed over time. The theory used to describe the
resulting data mathematically. In this analysis they make universe depend on mathematical models and equations that
extensive use of probability theory, a branch of mathematics.
are improved as our understanding of the physical universe
Data Analyst: increases. South Africa is at the forefront of cosmology in

As a data analyst, you analyse data using mathematical Data Mining:
modelling techniques to generate reports and visualizations
This is arguably is the fastest growing current field where
that provide insights into what the data is ‘hiding’, as well as mathematics plays an enormous role. How to find data and
to inform an organisation’s decisions and to solve problems
especially how to convert this data into useful information for
in financial markets.
governments, and business, is a Pandora’s Box of
Data Architect/Engineer: opportunities for people with mathematical ability and skills.

A data engineer designs, constructs, implements, tests and
maintains the technology that creates the infrastructure to
make good data available for informing an organisation’s

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