5 careers that add up

Indianapolis Star–Star North Bureau, The

Knight, Dana

From the rewards of teaching, to positions like actuaries and market researchers, these jobs make a real impact

By Dana Knight

July 26, 2006

Add four years of college plus one person fascinated by numbers, algorithms and equations.

What can you get? Five great careers in math.

Yeah. We know what you're saying. The words great and math should never be used together.

But subtract the strict workplace budget guy and personality–depleted accountant from your mind.

Think about the elementary teacher who gets to add with macaroni and marbles. Or the market researcher who gets to find out all kinds of cool stuff before anyone else.

Math careers are not just about numbers but about relating those numbers to real–world experiences, says Rebecca E. Burnett, author of "Careers for Number Crunchers & Other Quantitative Types."

"Lots of math whizzes can calculate answers to problems in their heads, but they can't always explain what they've done or why it matters," she says.

Today we give you two–plus–three (that's five) cool careers that involve math.

1 ELEMENTARY TEACHER

It may be the most fun of all math careers.

"I love it," says Richard Callan, a third–grade teacher with a specialty in mathematics at Bunker Hill Elementary School in Franklin Township. "Numbers don't lie, but they tell a lot."

When he starts teaching hourlong math lessons each day, that's when he really gets to know his kids' learning styles. Math also has garnered him the title of author, writing books that mix children's literature and mathematics.

Besides the lessons, teachers also use numbers to figure grades, put records in spreadsheets and explain the stats of standardized testing.

2 MARKET RESEARCH ANALYST

How well is that new dog food selling? Why are the red Corvettes more popular than the silver ones?

The research analyst's job is to figure out what affects the sales of a product or service. He or she gathers statistical data on competitors and looks over prices, sales and methods of marketing and distribution, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

A more creative part of the job involves designing surveys to measure consumer preferences.

So where does the math come in? The analyst gets to compile and evaluate the data, a process that can be quite mathematical.

3 FINANCIAL ANALYST

This may sound boring, but Dave Tinkey can give plenty of reasons why it's not. The financial analysis manager at Chase Downtown says his job is sort of like a detective–or at least a validity check of what's really going on at the company.

"If the manager says we're doing well in certain areas, do the numbers follow that or do they tell a different story?" he says.

It's his job to make sure the two mesh. Tinkey got into a numbers career years ago after graduating with a degree in accounting.

"I like math and seeing that the numbers relate to what's actually happening around us," he says.

4 PROFESSIONAL SPORTS STATISTICIAN

First of all, you get to watch sports for a living. Need we say more?

Sports statisticians record stats while events–such as basketball, football and baseball games–are being played. They then go back to make sure what they originally recorded matches the play–by–play. They prepare final stats for league records and work on the computer data entry.

While the job is often a part–time one, for many it's a dream career. And math is a big part of it.

You need to be able to add, subtract and divide in your head quickly. With all the action, there's not time for a calculator.

5 ACTUARY

This career is often labeled boring. More than 60 percent of actuaries are employed in the insurance industry, with a mission to gather and analyze data that estimates the probability of death, sickness, injury, disability or loss of property.

They use the numbers to help companies create policies that minimize the cost of those risks.

So what's cool about that? Well, for one, they get to take numbers and "make them make sense to other people," says Burnett.