• Question: What is it like being a mathematician?

    Asked by busy1scan on 26 Sep 2025. This question was also asked by days1scan, pock534dote63, daff534prog69, tews534perm53, rams534haar59.
    • Photo: Rachel Edwards

      Rachel Edwards answered on 26 Sep 2025:

      Hi! I’m not actually a mathematician! I’m a physicist, but I use maths every day as the language for describing how the world works. Maths is really important in loads of subjects, and we might use it for calculating statistics on experiments, or using equations to work out what we would predict to happen, or lots of other things. I much prefer my maths to be a toolbox – whereas some of my friends like maths just by itself because it’s beautiful.

    • Photo: CIARA HURLEY

      CIARA HURLEY answered on 24 Nov 2025:

      I use maths every day in my job, increasingly we rely on software (a bit like how we rely on calculators to check our sums), but honestly it doesn’t feel ‘nerdy’ or super smart like I thought it would. It’s a nice job in an office with some good people around me, that’s all! I wouldn’t enjoy what I do if it was super serious all the time.

    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 15 Dec 2025:

      There is alot more computer work involved than you would think but you still occasionally have to write it out on a board so that people can follow what you are doing.

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