What maths do you use in your job?

[DreamingofBrie]

A few years ago, a teacher started a brilliant thread on MN, asking posters whether they used maths in their job, and if so what job they did. The thread had hundreds of responses and it was great to see the diversity of the replies - I've used those responses in my classroom to show pupils how maths is used in jobs that they might not have thought of. Replies included a pilot, QC, nail technician, mediator, charity worker, SAHM, computer network programmer, chef, dancer, sports performance coach and many many more.

I'm a Maths teacher, so I use all sorts of maths in my job every day . I'm hoping for more interesting replies from this thread, so that I can update the display in my classroom!

Thanks in advance!

I hear you . I'm usually working out logistics timings to make sure all of the dc are where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be!

Yes, stats maths and basic maths for me. I'm a medical writer and work with clinical data. I'd say around good GSCE level maths, not quite A level.

I’m a solicitor - I regularly use addition, subtraction (bills), percentages and fractions (VAT and probate).

Also how to convert; feet and inches to metres, acres to hectares etc.

I'm a chef so use maths for menu planning and costs, measuring, managing sizes and portions. Changing recipes larger or smaller etc.

I often count to 32. I measure things in mm. I add up costs for people.
Guess what I do?

I was a software engineer and project manager in telecommunications. I used maths all the time. Often I was the only one in the team that had solid maths skills so I would get the interesting jobs. Things like error correction in transmissions, encryption, queue theory to work out whether systems being installed were likely to cope with the traffic.

On the project management side, general maths skills were always needed to track projects and software quality.

I didn't do stats at school but needed it, so studied it myself later so I could do what I needed at work.

"Business intelligence" (we do spreadsheets).

Often plot %s used as performance metrics. Today used smoothed rolling average for next month, to merge the actual performance %s with the projected performance %s (so that it looks like one smooth transition in the new roll out plan, & seniors won't be unhappy that the lines don't join up).

Sometimes we use means & standard deviations to make sure recent performance is typical of long term trends.

I listened to talk last year about syndromic surveillance. Fancy maths to spot things like terrorist or biological attacks at the earliest time possible, just as the number of people with relevant symptoms start to spike up.

As a litigation solicitor calculation of damages, calculation of loss of earnings etc

Calculation of interest payable

Calculation of tax and vat.

As an invigilator percentages to calculate extra time, addition to add on time for rest breaks etc.

I negotiate hotel prices for an online tour operator. I use maths every day - looking at booking numbers to work out if a hotel is performing better than last year, applying percentage discounts to the prices to check whether the new price is any good (which could be a percentage discount or converting something like stay 5 nights fet 1 night free).
Working out how many more bookings we need to make to hit target and what my bonus will be!
Calculating how much a price has gone up or down compared to last year.
Working out if a hotel has paid us enough commission.

Whilst we have spreadsheets for some of this, you still need to be able to work it out in case the formula is wrong .. or you're in a meeting with a hotel and need to mentally work out whether 15% off £140 is going to be good enough when marketing asked you to get to £120

Oh and being able to work out how different the exchange rate is to last year, i use that a fair bit too

I'm a payroll manager so maths is pretty much my entire job! Whether it's totting up overtime hours, doing manual gross to net calculations or creating formulas. There's not an hour goes by that I'm not using maths.

Another finance director here. Generally percentages, ratios, interest rates (ie working out things like mortgage payments).

Probability too.

I work out percentages on a daily basis, I work in travel.

I was a legal secretary specialising in residential development (new houses) so all the . I had to work out completion statements on a pro forma basis and devise formulae for them WHICH ACTUALLY INCORPORATED ALGEBRA!!!!!

Project administrator children's charity. Petty cash, invoices, budgeting.

All of it on a calculator

Mediator - if I am doing a property/finances case I need to be able to help people prepare their assets and liabilities information then once the percentage split is agreed help people translate this into something workable. A lot of people struggle with the fact that the house usually has to be sold as there often isn't enough money in the "pot" to give the other person their share otherwise. Superannuation (Australian pension) is also tricky. Luckily I'm good at the sort of basic numeracy, mental maths etc. that is required though I hate seeing one person who is more financially literate trying to bamboozle the other person with jargon. I shut that down pretty fast 😊

I am a business analyst working for a fmcg company and we do lots of work on data analytics. Currently working with the business to review their key performance indicators and how data from their huge databases can be converted into dashboards. Lots of calculations for working out speed, operating efficiencies, conformance to plan, consumption etc etc

I use percentages for yields and compound interest (for a NPV value), simple maths for investment values, viability and budget balancing, probability for risk assessment, graphs to give a visual representation to people who don't understand maths and detect trends in the market, Standard deviation to assess value for money against benchmarks, and I am developing a multi variate statistical model that enables us to use an index figure for describing different projects - so we can objectively undertake scenario analysis.

I am a Civil Servant working in the housing sector. Most people think my job is cuddle calls and ego massaging. It isn't I would not function without maths. I cannot make a single decision without it.

I work in IT. The maths is usually fairly simple, just arithmetic and unit conversions. For example if 1 gigabyte of data is copying at 10 megabits per second, how many minutes will it take. (About 13).

What's more important is the logical and problem solving skills. The same skills I used to approach a school maths problem and find the solution are skills I use to approach a technical problem and find its solution.

I work in publishing and use percentages to work out what price we can afford to sell our books to booksellers at and still make a profit.

I constantly use Mathematics at work.

I divide by four, by eight, by sixteen, by three, six and twelve, combining those fractions to make whole numbers.

I use logarithmic calculations to assess whether something is safe or will cause permanent damage.

I construct flow charts, read and create graphs, create and understand/manipulate waveforms.

I use Venn diagrams mentally.

I use formulae. I rearrange formulae.

I use multiples of numbers and divide large numbers instantly in my head.

My job? I teach Music and Music Technology and work as a musician and sound engineer. Music is profoundly mathematical. Every bar contains fractions. Every note is a particular frequency. Every sound has a particular waveform and altering it will change the pitch, duration, volume and timbre. Adjusting the plugins so that something has reverb added to it involves reading a graph. Sound Pressure Levels are logarithmic.

Constructing a plan for connecting up a mixer desk to a PA and stage setup and faultfinding is the same as following a flow diagram, as you follow logical steps to eliminate potential causes of problems - number 2 microphone doesn't work. Check the leads. Are they connected? Yes - change the microphone over. Does this solve it? No - change the first cable in the run. Does this fix it? No - check the bundle running into the stagebox. Does changing to a different cable in the bundle work? No - try changing into a different socket on the stage box and make sure you switch the new input into the original desk input. Does this sort it? No - try a different input. does this sort it? Yes? Thank goodness for that.

I work out whether a particular power extension can cope with the demands of x number of items plugged into it.

I set up instruments to match a vibration of 440 times per second. Tuning. I double check tunings by using harmonic frequencies or checking for vibrations slightly out of phase, causing 'beating'. I increase the frequencies to tune up a string, I reduce them to tune down.

Everything I do, whether consciously or unconsciously, even singing, is totally mathematical.

Minimum staffing levels.
Overtime.
ETAs/train arrival dot matrix.
Ticket machine cashing-up.
Event planning.
Using our radios.
Lost property.
Calculating how much a customer needs to put on their Oyster card.
Explaining why paper tickets are poor value.
In an emergency, making sure all my staff are present at roll-call.
Knowing the time, constantly.

Accountant for large manufacturing firm here. Literally dream maths each night like the Matrix films. Awful!

I run a dept budget so percentages, exchange rates, fractions, formulae, statistics, projections etc (all in spreadsheets)

Mostly basic GCSE. Haven’t used much of my A’lvel stuff since