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 work in sales and use maths to calculate %'s for fees we charge.

Thank you for the replies - I love reading through them.

@ValleyoftheHorses - I have no idea what you do!

@Minkies11 I remember working as a customer supply chain manager and dreaming in SAP every night.... it was terrible!

I work in the environmental sector.

I use maths all the time to try to make sense out of large highly variable environmental datasets (such as temperature, population sizes, habitat diversity, etc) calculating means, medians and other descriptive stats or applying recognised indices. Also to calculate things like areas, distances, speeds and volumes in relation to wildlife and habitats. I use more complex maths to apply statistical tests for things like monitoring change over time in habitats and species to try to assess if things are increading or declining.

I also have to cost projects, manage budgets, check targets, etc, which uses all the basic maths skills.

I teach literacy. But today I used maths several times. This morning for about an hour, working out the budgets for a new scheme. Then tonight, I had to do some percentages to find out what level a pupil would have attained at GCSE based on the score he got in a mock paper.

I do a very similar job to sackrifice.

Science technician in a school:
Percentages
I.e 1% solutions is 1g in 100ml and multiplying up to required amount
Finding how much solid is needed to make specific concentration of solution
G needed= mr x ml x conc
Diluting to a weaker concentration
Ml x original conc / required conc

I'm a primary teacher so I use it a fair bit!

Previously I was a bank manager so I did use it a fair bit then too. Cash checks, adding up reserve, working out loan calculations, mortgage repayments, bank charges etc.

I have a minimum wage job working night shift in a supermarket shelf stacking which to a lot of people is the easiest job in the world. I use math all the time working out date codes, checking I can fit products on the shelf, delivery times and we don't know in advance how many pallets we'll have so sometimes I have to work out if it's possible to complete tasks in the allocated time, I also have to count our recycling and food waste before it's returned.

Events management. Calculating costs of hiring venues, catering, security, travel expenses, speakers, etc against charge of fees. This is at university, but same principle applies in museums, galleries, festivals, theatres.

I dropped Maths after GCSE & its been hard self teaching what I've needed after that point.

For much of my career I worked as a software developer for an investment bank. Examples of projects I worked on included Credit Risk (calculating probability of default) & market risk(how much money could the bank lose if market variables such as Interest Rates or Exchange Rates changed overnight).

In the end all IT comes down to the computation /storage /transmission of 1's and 0's so an understanding of binary is key.

I'm now a SAHM. Just this week I've worked out whether a mortgage with fees/higher rate vs no fees/lower rate is better for us. Helped my kid with a science project on CO2 emissions. Followed exchange rates. Read a hearing test chart.

I had to work out people's hours for our flexi-time system. Maths is not my forte and I checked and double-checked to make sure it was correct before I typed the results. Another secretary had invented a ruler to place on each form so that it was like a ready-reckoner which was very handy. Hated maths but seemed to drift towards these jobs.

I use maths every day analysing data and looking for trends in our public outreach and social media engagement rates as part of a science comms team.

At home DD(9) has T1 diabetes, so we have to calculate the carbohydrate content of everything she eats and drinks, sometimes working through the ingredients in recipes, weighing the total, measuring portions and so on; at other times calculating percentages from values on packets. These numbers are then used in conjunction with her blood glucose levels (scanned, recorded and graphed) to calculate insulin doses before meals and at other times when necessary. She has to do these calculations at school as well to inject her insulin before lunch, and if her blood sugar is low, work out how much glucose (usually a number of jelly beans!) she needs to bring her levels up again. Diabetes involves a LOT of maths.

Just arithmetic really.

X needs to take 7.5mg of medication Y 3 times per day, but medication Y is only available in boxes containing 100 x 5mg tablets. The maths is simply that she needs 1.5 tablets each time, plus how often to pre order them, given the 12 month expiry date and the fact her medication might be changed at the review on whatever date.

Obviously there's a lot of that style - 14 clients some of whom take 7 or 8 different medications in a variety of forms and combinations.

There's also milage driven (simple subtraction - milage was 23578 when I got into the car, and 23601 when I got out - I need to fill in a column saying how far I drove.

Then blood pressure and weight, but that's barely maths (calculating weight gain or loss - again simply subtraction).

Grocery shopping - weekly shop for 14 people, how much will it cost, checking change.

Cooking - weighing, calculating how much of an ingredientis needed, tripping or quadrupling recipes written for 4.

Helping people budget on a simple level (our clients only directly control spending money, not bills).

Calculating points for funding requests.

Maths with time - helping people work out journey times, time management generally.

It's all just arithmetic though, no higher maths at all. All primary school maths!

No maths but I use excel A LOT and have a lot of numerical accuracy involved in my job. I'm a document controller and have to QA check document numbers and keep lots of logs on excel, which involve formulas & macros etc.

SAHD here. Day to day, I use fairly basic arithmetic to plan my day for things like what time to leave the house to be somewhere, for cooking, budgeting, DIY and so on. I manage the family investment portfolio so I'm always looking at yields, dividend cover, P/E ratios, individual stock betas, market movements, stamp duty, transaction fees.

I play cricket too, so on the field I'm constantly thinking about run rates, over rates, economy rates for individual bowlers, as well as overall career and season statistics. Thankfully I've never had to deal with Duckworth-Lewis calculations.

When we decided to move house a couple of years back, I set up a project budget. As well as the whole "can we afford this and how far can we go" thinking, we had to calculate estate agents fees, stamp duty, make assumptions on unknown costs, and forecasts for things like outlay on a storage unit. Of course, as events happened, things changed, or new information came to light many of the calculations had to be re-done.

I'm an educational psychologist. I need to have a good understanding of psychometrics, distributions curves and statistical significance. I don't do any really 'hard' psychometrics, like working out levels of significance between test scores, but a couple of times I a week, a have to explain how a bell curve works, standardised scores, percentiles and what the significance of a particular score might mean.

I always thought I was rubbish at maths, but that's because I was badly taught at school. Scraped a B and GCSE, with a lot of help from my dad. But I got a first in both of my stats exams at university, and I'm faster at mental arithmetic than my husband, who has an A at A-level.

I'm also mum to a year 5 child. Blimey the maths is hard! I still can't understand how they teach long division now. And we are now multiplying and diving decimal numbers. It hurts!

I'm a carpenter. I do a lot of measuring, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. Fractions. Trigonometry (especially in roofing): So. Many. Angles.
I'm also self-employed so have to put together quotes and do my books.

I remember learning trig in school and wondering what on earth I'd ever need to know it for as an adult! 🤦🏻‍♀️

I'm training to be a web developer and use maths to do a whole bunch of stuff. Just finished putting a calculation into my code that will create and space elements to look like wooden panelling (I know, saving the world haha). In my former life I was a medical student and used maths for drug doses etc. My partner used to be an astrophysicist and would use really complex maths to generate predictions about black holes. Now he's a data analyst so yet more maths. In the future he'd like to become a game developer which, again, so much maths. Maths maths maths. I really wish I'd read a thread like this as a child and not yawned and dossed my way through maths class, it's been a hell of a job to catch up as an adult!

As a scientist I've used symmetry (group theory) to look at interactions involving molecules, atoms and subatomic particles to find out if particular processes are possible or not. A bit esoteric, I suppose, but the fundamental concept of symmetry is accessible to even very young children.

I think it's important to find ways to convince children that maths is so much more than doing sums.

But I'm afraid that, with maths, it often seems to be a case of having to 'eat up your greens' for years before you get to taste the chocolate cake.

I'm a nurse so we use maths for drug calculations.

I work in high level complaints for an energy company. I send simplified breakdowns of payments and charges. I calculate if you use X amount of electricity would tariff 1 be better at A pence per kWh and B pence per day, or tariff 2 at C pence per kWh and D pence per day. I calculate you need to pay Y per month, but if you pay a lump sum/have a refund you need to pay Z per month.

@DreamingofBrie - SAP screams and beats head

Ooh, that sounds cool, OutWiththeOutcrowd. ** I forgot about symmetry in my list. I used to be a crystallographer, and crystal structures are really important in my work nowadays. Symmetry in 3 dimensions on non-orthogonal axes...needs pictures really!

I forgot about matrices too.

I'm saving all of these for every time my year 9 son turns around and goes "well what am I ever going to use that for" after a maths lesson 😂