WHAT I WISH I HAD LEARNED IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF COLLEGE MATHEMATICS
CBMS FORUM – Reston, VA - October 5-7, 2014
Sabrina Schmidt, Vassar College 2010
In May 2010, I graduated from Vassar College with a degree in Math and Italian. While many of my friends had jobs, grad school, or internships lined up, I was not sure what my next move would be. I decided not to apply to graduate school because there was no particular area of math that I knew I wanted to study further.I had a growing feeling that I wanted to use my math skills in the entertainment ormusic industrybut wasn’t sure where to start. I decided to apply to math-related jobsinsome of my favorite entertainment and music companies.Ultimately, Time Inc., the magazine publisher,offered meaposition as a Data Analyst.I accepted the job offer since it seemed to bean ideal blend of my math and entertainment interests. At my job, one of my main responsibilities is managing store-level distributions for three magazines, Us Weekly, Rolling Stone, and Men’s Journal, all published by Wenner, a primary client of ours.I determine how many copies should go into each store for each issue by using formulas based on store-level average sales and theamount of available checkout pockets in the store. In the past four years working for Time Inc., I have been astounded by just how vital math is to the magazine industry. I was really impressed and surprised to learn about the math-related projects that different divisions are involved in. There is aShopper Insights group that has developed an eye-tracking system which follows the movement of a consumer’s pupils while shopping. They use this data to optimize magazine placement in the stores. The Research divisions work on projects that include using subscriber data to help expand the reach of our brands, and analyzing historical data to create new pricing strategies. They are about to do a zone pricing test for People magazine, where they will remove the cover price and set different prices for different regions.It turns out math is a surprisingly key component in thisfieldthatmost people wouldn’t think to associate it with. But should this be surprising?Math knowledge and research is essentialin countless areas, and I think college students in particular could benefit from learning more about these links.In the past few weeks, I have reflectedon my college math experience (particularly the first two years) and will share some thoughts about what I wish I learned, andhow I feel themath department could have prepared me even more for my post-Vassar career.I consultedwith some of my fellow Vassar math majors, whose input is reflected throughout this talk, and I alsoenjoyed reading the bookThe Mathematical Sciences in 2025, which validated many of my thoughts and gave me more insight.
Now that I see firsthand the impact of math in the magazine publishing world, I wish I had learned more about math’s crucial and expanding contributions in today’s business landscape. Introducingmath studentsearly on tovarious applications(making sure to includefieldswhere the students are not as aware of math’s role), will trigger them to thinkabout the value of a math degree and the growing demand for math graduates. The textbooks for the courses I took were mostly filled with theorems, definitions, proofs, etc.and barely any examples of applications. I feel that I didn’t think or learn enough about connectionsto real-world uses during college. Separating core and applied math is notpractical anymore – most every concept covered in class has proven to have importance beyond the math science discipline. To give students a better idea of post-graduation options and potential areas of specialization, professors could discussthe relevanceof topics covered in class to today’s math landscape (such as the role eigenvectors play in Google’s PageRank algorithmor how encryption uses number theory to facilitate Internet commerce). I hear Vassar has recently begun inviting graduates back to talk about theircareer paths -- a program I wish had been available to me when I was there.I would have liked to learn more about emerging and evolving fieldswhere we are only just starting to discover math’s prominence, like web development and Social Networks and other areas which may be too new to even be in our textbooks.And there are manyindustries in whichmath’s long-existingrole continues to expand, such as aviation, movie animation, and national security. Incorporating examples like these intothe established curriculumshows studentsthat existingmath theoryinfluences new applications, and in turn, new applications drive new theoretical research by highlighting more problems.There could even be one introductory-level course that focuses specifically on real-world applications of math science, where each unit is dedicated to a different field where math is used. A course like this could be taught by a few different professors.
If students were more aware of which areas of math are prominently used in theapplications that most interest them, I believe they would be more apt to take some introductory courses in statistics and computer science in theirfirst two years of college.Regardless of career direction, the other STEM fields (Science, Technology, and Engineering)are arguably more important for math students to learnnow than ever before. The math sciences continue to be the foundation for exciting research and development intechnology, computer science, and statistics. Yet I’m sure there are other math graduates like me who didn’t take classes on any of these subjects,andwere surprised at the extent to which these fields are used in their lines of work. Not only I, but also some fellow Vassar math majors I talked with, wish the math department put more emphasis on these areas of study and worked alongside these other departments to make us more aware of the strong connections. Much of the work in rapidly evolving areas such as compressed sensingor drug design is being done by people with a foundation in multiple STEM disciplines. To keep up with the broadening of the math sciences,I wish math departments wouldrequiremajors to take courses in at least one othermath-relateddiscipline in addition to the core math classes. Thiswould betterequip them fora wider range ofcareers. I can certainly attest to this with my Data Manager position at Time Inc.Although I don’t use high-level statistics or computer science concepts in my job, through the years I’ve had to learncertain data analysis and computer systems skills that I wish I had gotten a head start on in college.Upon entering my job, I was surprised to see that the company had its own systems built by in-house programmers. For instance, we havea system that houses data on each magazine-selling store in the country and anothersystem that uses formulas to suggest an optimal number of copies to put in the stores based on certain data parameters. I communicate frequently with programmers, making suggestions for system enhancement and performing user QA testing. Greater computer science knowledge on my end could have led to faster progress and a stronger group effort.
An increase in the number of students trained in multiple quantitative disciplines would probably lead to more exciting collaborations among the different fields, whether it be in the classroom, the workplace, or in research labs. Students would also benefit fromimproved interdepartmental collaboration on the college’s part, which could involve joint courses that count for credit in more than one discipline. For example, a class using computer science skills to analyze large data sets could be applied towards either a computer science or math major. Professors from different departments could even co-teach courses like this. The departments might even encourage students with multiple math-relatedintereststo consider double majoringin math and anotherquantitative discipline.Students would let the department know where their interests lie and the faculty would then advise them onthe courses best tailored to those topics. A list of suggested courses provided by the departments for different combinations of dual majors would be aninvaluable tool for students to have in the early years of college. Freshman and sophomores would take comfort in knowing that,regardless of which subject(s) they decide to pursue further, there are many worthwhile mathematical options beyond just core math classes that the department has made available to them. Keeping these interconnected departments closer in proximity to each otherwould make it easierand more likely for students to take classes in multiple disciplines, and would facilitate collaboration among students with related interests.If an environment more like this had existed,I probably would have taken more science and technology-based courses, and fewer theory-based courses, and I would have at least considered a double major.
I enjoyed the variety of math courses that I took (some of which include linear and advanced linear algebra, modern and advanced modern algebra, multivariable calculus, number theory, probability,and real analysis). Not only I, butalso a number of my Vassar classmates who I consulted with, wish we had selected our courses with more regard to post-college interests. I learned a minimal amount of statistics in the probability course I took, but the department offered a good amount of statistics classes, which I knownow that I would have really benefited from in the long run. I think math departments should require math majors and even those going for a correlate or minor to take at least one statistics-based course in their first two years.This would help themto recognize early onhow important astatistics background is in increasing their mathematical value, and by extension, their employability in data-driven careers. And taking one course would likely lead to them taking additional statistics courses, especially after they realize the wide range of careers these topics and skills are useful for. I also realize now that I would have learned about more applications had I taken statistics since it lends itself more to real-world examples. Without taking statistics courses, students who end upin mathematical jobs would most likely have to teach themselves some of the concepts and tools,likemodeling via simulation or statistical inference, in the workplace. I don’t use any high-level statistics concepts in my job, but I definitely use many tools that are honed in a statistics class.My job requires a quantitatively astute person who works accurately and efficiently to make meaningful conclusions from large data sets. As I mentioned before, I was impressed and surprised by the amount of research that goes on within my company, much of which I’m sure requires a statistical background. Although college statistics courses involve more complex concepts than I currently use at work, I am still organizing, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data, all of which is at the core of statistics. And perhaps if I had learned about somemore high-level statistics concepts, I might be able to find ways to apply themto my job.I wish I had learned about hierarchical modeling, for example, which has become more vital inmathin recent years with our increased computational power. Reading about this topic inThe Mathematical Sciences in 2025made me think of my company and made me wonder if any of our research departments are using hierarchical models. I feel they could be valuable for sales predictions or for figuring out each magazine’s “potential” to sell, with a minimal margin of error. My Vassar classmate who works at a hedge fund and Iwere talking about heuristic techniques and how learning more about advanced heuristics methods would have proven advantageous in our fields of work.I find many anomalies in the store-level magazine data, anything from sales that look inflated to incorrect chain or wholesaler information. I have to estimate how much of the data is off-base, and then I make a decision on whether I need to dig into these anomalies further or whether I can proceed with my analysis.Sometimes you work out a lengthy, rigorous, seemingly logical solution, but when you apply some common sense it’s clear that you’ve wasted your time. Heuristic techniques may have slightly larger margins of error but maximize return on effort. We don’t always need the most perfect solution. Heuristic techniquesare also frequently used with pattern recognition and data mining, other areas we would have been interested to learn more about.
I read in the book The Mathematical Sciences in 2025 that by 2018, U.S. businesses will need another 140,000-190,000 employees who haveadvanced quantitative skills anddeep analytical talent,and who are adept in working with big data.I feel the types of courses that best suit these characteristics are statistics and computer science.More data than ever is generated, collected, and used for research in today’s world, thanks to more complex technological systems. This complexity is helping to push math science research forward.And because of this, all different kinds of fields, fromneuroscience tonational defenseto advertising, are looking for employees with statistical and computational expertise who are at home working with messy data and who don’t always have to rely on existing models. As the global math landscape becomes more data-centric, so should the math curricula and requirements for college students. Requiring math majors to take a course that gets students started on working with large data sets and forming their own conclusions would be beneficial. Even though I don’t use super-complex data concepts in my work, I feel that taking courses like these would have sharpened many of the data analysis skills necessary for my job.My company collects an abundant amount of data, starting at the store-level. Location, demographic information, and average weekly magazine sales are just a few of the data points we keep track of for each store. We collect information on the number of copies received and sold for each issue of most US magazines on a store by store basis.A new piece of data we have started collecting in the last few years is day of delivery, which is the day of the week each store receivesthe weekly magazines. Having this data has helped us increase pre-weekend delivery percentage for certain chains. We also compare day of delivery today-of-first sale – ideally, the copiesget merchandised properly and the first copyof the title sells within a day or two of the initial delivery. I sift through data to find anomalies, opportunities, and trends. I use data to come up with ideas for tests, to read tests, and to determine optimal next steps. With the print magazine industry struggling, we analyze data to try to find ways to cut costs without sacrificing sales revenue. I also have to make the best of messy data. For instance, our second largest wholesaler recently went out of business, so the twenty thousand stores serviced by that wholesaler were suddenly without magazines until the chains were able to make deals with new wholesalers.We had all kinds of disordered data files coming at us from different chains and wholesalers, and we had to track the status of each store. It took a few months for all of the stores to get back to their normal magazine routine, so the sales data from that transitional periodisone big anomaly.
Many of my fellow Vassar math students and I wish wehad learned more aboutcomputation and simulation in college. Often times, data is of a scale that can only be analyzed through statistical and math techniques, such as dimensionality reduction, uncertainty quantification, and analyzingseparate subsets before aggregating the results. I would have enjoyed learning about these methods. With the growth of computing power, there is more reliance on simulation via math models in many different disciplines, and more math scientists are getting experience in these areas.It would be advantageous for students to learn about current applications of computation and simulation, like how simulations help us decide which medical treatments might work or how in movies and computer games, certain action scenes and characters are the product of math models and simulations. Introducing these concepts in early years of college shows math students right out of the gate how powerful and relevant these topics are to the math sciencesand to our society.
I wish it had been a requirement for math majors to take at least one computer science course in the first two years. I didn’t even considerenrolling in courses in the other STEM departmentsor the economics departmentthat may have really broadened my math knowledge. Many of my fellow students and I weren’t aware of the extent to which math is used incomputer science, and of how vital computer scienceis to ongoing developments in so many fields. Computer science helps bridge the gap between theory and practical application. Itseems optimal nowfor computer scientists to have a math background, and for math scientists to have a computer science background before entering the workforce.Experience inareas that combine math science and computer science skills (like mathmodeling, simulations, programming, and coding)is now even more essentialfor a mathematical career. I wish that the math department took this more into consideration.And again, there could even besomeinterdisciplinary classes that could count as credit in either department. I now see thatmore background in programming and coding would have been an assetfor me in my job. Having knowledge of these subjects in today’s world is extremely powerful, and it is beneficial to start learning these skills as early as possible. I was even just reading on the flight here about an iPad app called Hopscotch that aims to teach the fundamentals of programming to young kids. In the app, youdrag and drop colorful blocks of code to build routines.Facebook, Google, and any other web or mobile-based company are built on a foundation of coding and algorithms. And almost every company, from internet start-ups to mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar retail stores, has some sort of web presence.At Time Inc., I work in Microsoft Access and SQL building some queries and scripts that analyze large amounts of data. I have taught myself some rudimentary coding to better understand the logic, structure,and language, but I would have loved to have had a jumpstart in college on querying data and forming conclusions from these queries. We have a data portal that has many important reports that anyone in our company can run, and my group makes suggestions to the programming team for new reports as well as enhancements to existing ones. I recently had a uniquesituation where I had to collaborate more with the programmers than usual. They were having trouble getting the report to displaythe necessary results.Meanwhile, I had createdmy own personal query that got me the data I needed so that I didn’t have to wait for them to create the report. Eventually, I had to give the programmers my query so they could copy the logic in order to build this company-wide report.This particular report happened to be one that I was able to figure out the exact logic for, but building the queries for many other reports would be beyond my understanding. If I had more of a background in programming, I could potentially collaborate with thatteam more often.