• Question: Hello what jobs need maths but many people don't know they need maths ?

    Asked by suer534dunt96 on 19 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Oscar Chow

      Oscar Chow answered on 19 Nov 2025:

      Aside from the obvious jobs, I believe that a strong grasp of maths can make your job easier, make it easier to be creative in those jobs, which will allow you to get more out of what you want in your job. For example, in music, you wouldn’t think maths has much place in making or playing music. However, understanding maths can really help in understanding why some notes sound good together, why harmonies (harmonic ratios) sound good together and how different tempos affect the feeling of a song. All of these have maths at their core.

      Artistic and creative careers like architecture, even graphic design can also be simplified and understood better with a solid maths foundation. Algebra, trigonometry, ratios and visualising 3 dimensions is key in these jobs, and maths can help be more creative in these spaces!

      Nowadays, if you work in sports, for example football coaching, all of the top teams are using statistics to gain slight advantages, and mathematical techniques are central to these methods!

      So, as you can see there are a lot of different careers where maths might not be essential, but since it is so powerful, it can really help you be the best you can in your job and even be more creative in what you do!

    • Photo: Lucy Rycroft-Smith

      Lucy Rycroft-Smith answered on 23 Nov 2025:

      This is a good blog to read to help answer this question! https://www.cambridgemaths.org/blogs/categories/interviews-and-intersections/?currentpage=5&resultsperpage=10&order=publish_date|desc

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    I agree with Oscar, lots of jobs use maths without actually having ‘maths’ in the description of the job. Lots of jobs rely on using and understanding data, for which being comfortable with numbers, in general, is really helpful. When I was a clinical vet, I used mental arithmetic to calculate drug dosages and how to give fluids to animals which were dehydrated and I used applied maths to understand how to use imaging equipment like ultrasound, X Rays, or MRI. Now, as a researcher, I use statistics, which is very maths focused, to understand some of the data I’m collecting and to interpret what the research findings are revealing – other researchers who I work with use spatial maths to understand geographic distributions of disease or other health information, lots of people working in health (whether for people or animals) need to be comfortable using maths to understand this kind of data.