YOU rarely hear of somebody working as a mathematician but colleges report that graduates of maths courses have little difficulty finding Professor Ted Hurley of UCG's department of maths explains that other developed countries are producing far more maths graduates than Ireland is, yet are still complaining about the lack of maths graduates to supply their economy.
As an example, there are approximately 4,500 mathematics graduates in Britain each year, which proportionately means we should be producing about 350 graduates from our universities. The precise figures for Ireland are not available but at a rough estimate we are producing 100 mathematics graduates," he explains. Hurley uses the term mathematics to refer to someone who took at least 50 per cent of the final-year courses in mathematics at honours level.
In Britain, about 40 per cent of mathematics graduates go into the computing industry and about 5 per cent go into finance and business. Hurley says that "if we are to develop our financial services areas, such as the new financial services centre in Dublin, we must increase our pool of mathematics graduates substantially".
He is concerned that the advice at second level is that if your're good at maths you should study engineering. "This has been very good for our engineering schools but has left other applications of mathematics out in the cold," he adds.
Maths is traditionally perceived as a difficult subject. So, what do you need to study maths at college and succeed?
Hurley points out that some students have come to UCG with a pass in maths in the Leaving Certificate and have graduated with very good honours degrees.
However, most of the denominated degrees in maths and applied maths have specific requirements in Leaving Cert maths. Professor D J Simms of TCD's school of maths and theoretical physics explains that there are two requirements for the maths degree in TCD - a B in higher maths and a real love of the subject. The requirement was a C until four years ago but Simms says that a number of students with Cs dropped out of the course and that it was unfair on these students to take them in.
In fact, in view of the new maths course at Leaving Certificate, Simms is considering increasing the requirement, possibly to exclude B3s. Each year, a number of mature students are admitted but they must take maths in the Leaving Certificate and get a B1. This is reasonable as they only have to take one subject, says Simms. "We cater for the people whether they are interested in pure, applied, computational maths or statistics," he says.
Of the 1994 maths graduates, about half went on to further study and half went directly into employment in jobs including assistant engineer, financial researcher/ programmer, software developer, trainee accountant and medical statistics officer. Further study options included maths, engineering, computing and the H.Dip, which leads to a teaching qualification.
Of course, many students combine the study of mathematics with other subjects. Professor Anthony Farrell of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, says that the double honours. degree is highly marketable in the research community because the combination of a very high level of competence in maths with a high level of competence in a second subject like biology or physics or chemistry or economics is very attractive to the people who run research institutes.
He points out that mathematics is the most popular subject in Maynooth college. "Over 1,000 students take maths courses here. That is, for instance, twice as many as take theology courses."
Farrell says that "in general, the training we provide in our degree programmes develops your ability to think for yourself and to learn new techniques and tools for yourself and so keep up with changing times. These abilities of independent thought and flexibility mean that the mathematics graduate is ideally placed to serve the needs of almost any institution or organisation which is dynamic and which is trying to adapt and keep up to date in a rapidly changing world."
