How Many People Have a Background in Maths, Sci, Eng, Med, etc.?

[cfimages]

BSc in environmental science and climatology. Thanks to Johnny Howards great funding cuts of 1996/97, never got a chance to use it.

Damn, that's a shame. Hot field right now, you want some contact details?

Thanks for the offer. Just saw your email, will reply later tonight when I'm at a computer (hate typing on a phone)

[Abacus]

BS mechanical engineering and 4 yrs auto industry experience. I hated the lifestyle and stress of being an engineer. I'll stick around Taiwan TEFLing for a couple more years and get a teaching cert in math back home. Overall my English writing sucks as almost anyone can notice but I think I'm a pretty good teacher.

[zyzzx]

Bachelors and doctorate in the coolest (and most fun) of the sciences - earth sciences, currently working in a research position (although hoping to move on up in the academic world soon )

[Super Hans]

Electronics, and I have used it professionally for 30 years. Except now I am an aspiring Sandwich Artist.

A little imagination and Bob's your uncle: Solar powered submarines. You could apply for a patent.

[saddletramp]

Electronics, and I have used it professionally for 30 years. Except now I am an aspiring Sandwich Artist.

A little imagination and Bob's your uncle: Solar powered submarines. You could apply for a patent.

I like that. You would make a good marketing consultant.
But I think a big reason that I decided to leave the rat race and become an entrepreneur, is for my son. I have been checking out the tuition rates, and for what it costs to send a kid through school, might be better off to buy them a business. And if the kid picks a liberal arts major, even to the graduate level, they will probably be stuck in the fast food industry anyway. A lot of my art history major buddies career choices turned out to be "you want fries with that".

[wix]

My undergraduate major was applied mathematics. However, my subsequent studies have been in the social sciences.

[headhonchoII]

HH: Work experience too?

Yes I work in the biotechnology industry.

[Gao Bohan]

I don't have a degree in science or math, but my MBA program included statistics courses, which I have actively put to use for the engineering firm I work at. For example, I have been run regression analyses on software testing results, and determined the required sample size to arrive at statistically significant QC results. Obviously, these are simple tasks and I don't consider myself an engineer or mathematician. Still, it was satisfying to apply mathematical techniques in a real world situation.

[GuyInTaiwan]

saddletramp: Your point about buying a business as opposed to paying for tuition might very well be right. Even better might be to just start an investment portfolio for a/your child at a very young age. By the age of twenty-five, that could be huge. If you teach them how to think about that themselves, by the time they're in their mid-thirties or early forties, with any decent (though not stellar) job, they could be very comfortable.

I probably consider financial literacy to be third in importance of what anyone learns, beaten only by literacy and basic numeracy. Yet there's an enormous, gaping hole in the education system there. Usually, kids will do a two week unit on simple and compound interest (simple interest is a complete waste of time knowing about because almost everything is compounded) in mathematics when they're about fourteen. They may or may not do some kind of consumer studies subject later in high school, and then they may go on to study business/economics related subjects at the end of high school or at university, but the vast mass of people receive next to no practical education in managing money. If nothing else, I'm going to be actively teaching my kids all about personal finance, investing and behavioural economics.

[Dr. McCoy]

So. The answer to this thread is... three.