Build your own maths career

What does a maths career look like? Let us count the ways! By combining maths with another passion, your child can forge a truly niche career path.

Mathematics is all around us in work and leisure and is often cited as the ‘universal language’. But maths has its own dialects and nuance too. Maths is versatile and practical, capable of prompting big, open questions and delivering certainty in its answers. It is also the gateway to many interesting careers for your child – no matter where their passions lie.

Here are just a few examples of how a fulfilling and fascinating maths career can be built by combining this foundational subject with another passion or interest.

Maths careers in health

Is a career in the health sector on the cards? Then your child should stick with maths.

Doctors, for example, rely on models and statistics all day long to make important decisions about people’s current healthcare. They use modelling and formulas to decide what medicines people should be given and at what dosage, what procedures are likely to be successful and which ones are too risky.

Statisticians are also sought after in the healthcare sector to track everything from population health to studying genetics or the spread of a pandemic.

Scientists right now are also working on developing quantum computers – extremely powerful computers that use cutting-edge physics to do more complex computations than we’ve ever been able to do before, and much faster than we can today. In the near future, these quantum computers will also be able to do things like design better medicines.

Maths careers in the environment

Is your child passionate about saving the planet? Maths is used by professionals including environmental scientists and urban planners to track and preserve species and measure the impact of human development on the natural environment. This involves complex decision- making calculations to produce a ‘model’ that can be used to predict in detail how a species will cope in the future.

The scientists can then change some of the calculations to examine what will happen if we modify human behaviour in certain ways: does that make the problem better or worse?

Maths will be a crucial part of saving the planet as we deal with climate change.

Maths careers in cutting-edge tech

Maths and computers go hand in hand. Mathematical language – and most importantly logic – is built into every computerised device you have come in contact with. That will continue to be the case with the exciting ongoing developments in tech. Self-driving cars? Maths! Space travel? Maths! Quantum computing? So much maths! Virtual reality? You’d better believe it – maths!

As you can see, whatever your child's passion, there will be a maths connection – and even if maths isn’t central to your child’s future career, fluency in this foundational subject will help give them an edge.