Mathematics and Job Opportunities

kelle

Dapper gent and ecksor, could you tell me what job opportunities there are for somebody with a Mathematics degree. Or are you just doing your courses out of interest?

ecksor

Interest for me.

These might help answer your question:

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos043.htm
http://www.ima.org.uk/mathematics/careers.htm

http://plus.maths.org/ is an online magazine that occasionally has interviews with maths graduates to see what they do.

DapperGent

I work in Meteroology so it's a bit of both for me. I've always liked Maths but it will also help me for promotions, more interesting work etc.

I'd eventually like to get involved in numerical weather prediction models for which I'll need a good maths and physics background.

kelle

Thanks very much, DapperGent. Can you tell me how it compares to Leaving Certificate Honours Maths? I loved Maths at school, and always left any homework on it till last so I'd have something to look forward to. However, that was 15 years ago, but I am itching to get back to working out Maths questions, so I think I might give one of the OU courses a go. Any advise?

ecksor

Using Mathematics and Exploring Mathematics seems to be the recommended route into OU mathematics and appears to revise leaving certificate level and then ease into more abstract stuff.

I started with Introduction to Pure Mathematics (although I did some post leaving cert calculus a few years back) which depended slightly on some LC stuff to begin with but most of the course was completely new stuff. If you were confident with LC maths then you could get through this with some perseverance. To get the most out of it it would probably be best to have a bridge though.

The one that myself and DapperGent are currently doing,
Mathematical Methods, Models and Modelling seems to have a few bits and pieces in common with leaving cert applied maths if I remember correctly. Like M203 most of it is new though and it throws you into the deep end of differential equations pretty quickly.

kelle

Thanks a million for your help too, ecksor. Did you have to attend residential school? Was it far from where you live (if yes)?

ecksor

Yeah, I went to Nottingham last July and it was great. It made me want to go back to fulltime college.. I live in Dublin, so a flight to East Midlands and a bus into the campus was required.

They're replacing M203 with M208 which will be a similar course (although missing some of the nice Geometry I liked and a few other bits and pieces) but won't have a residential school. A pity in my opinion, you could get a lot of things clarified for you there in reviews and tutorials and the lectures were good (and some were very good).

MST207 has a residential school in Stirling or Bath, but again that's being changed to a new course, but the residential school can be taken separately if you wish.

kelle

Oh, so they're no held in Ireland then. And how about exams? Sorry about all these questions but I want to be sure about this before I take the plunge!

BuffyBot

Most OU residential schools are held in the UK, so if the course has one it will mist likely involve a trip over for a week. Exams and tutorials take place within Ireland though.

ecksor

By default I think that most exams are assigned to Belfast, but you can get your exam centre moved to elsewhere for a fee. Not sure where else you can have them.

kelle

And how many times yearly do you have exams?

ecksor

Typically each module has one exam in October.

Continuous assessment in the form of assignment makes up half of the overall mark, but the assignments and the exam have to be both passed independently.