Double Majoring?

[Mammon]

What subject would be good to double major in with Math? Would Statistics be a good choice?

[B.Good]

This answer depends on so many things. How do you define as "good"? Do you mean complements well or gives you a better chance of being employed or going to graduate school? Do you plan on going to graduate school or going straight into the work force? What do you wish to study/do in your post-undergraduate career? How much are you willing to work for that extra piece of paper/qualification(s)? What do you plan for your specialization to be for math (even if your university has a planned math major, there is probably a lot of room in your schedule to choose some kind of specialty/general focus)? Do you have any kind of background in any other field of study? There are probably still questions I forgot to ask.

[Mammon]

I was thinking of the former, a second major that would complement well with being a Math major. I haven't really thought of what I want to do post-undergraduate, since I'm in high school right now, but I think I'd like to go to graduate school if possible. I don't really have and idea of what to specialize in, but I'm enjoying Calculus right now, so maybe I could specialize in analysis?

[cameron432]

Have you thought of something like Physics? It can be very calc based. You may like it...

But in all honesty, if you can't think of something you'd actually, you shouldn't do a double major... You should spend more time on math. If you enjoy something, maybe minor in it... I'm only double majoring because I LOVE both math and physics...

[Mammon]

I've never really liked Physics that much, but I've only taken the boring old algebraic physics. I don't know if I'll like calculus-based physics better, but right now my favorite science is Biology. Could I double major in that?

[Chlorophyte]

Get a double major in Ecology. No joke, the field is very math-intensive but there are very few people who are good at math. /facepalm

Check out Population Ecology to start, but Community Ecology needs some modelling as well. As always, stats and programming are good skills to have as well.

Lots of opportunities in both research and natural resources management if you do that.

[jawdisorder]

You can double major in basically what ever you want to but if there's very little overlap between the two, as I would guess there is between math and biology, you will need to take heavier course loads or have to stay in college longer to meet the requirements of both.

[B.Good]

Double majoring is by no means a necessity. There are plenty of things you can do with "just" a math degree even if you want to go straight into the work force. If you wish to do a concentration in analysis, there is not a specific degree that I know of, at least, that will help you if you want to go to graduate school to study analysis.

For the record, "elementary" analysis (which is usually fairly difficult), is quite different from a calculus course. At my university, it is quite common to give 400 level courses few word descriptions. Ours for the analysis class here is "proving calculus". You essentially prove all of the theorems that you took/take on faith, yep, even Rolle's theorem which seems obvious. Since you're a high school you have a lot of time to think about your "specialization" (assuming you go to a university at which you are just given a lot of freedom in your degree, in which case your specialization is unofficial).

If for some reason you feel the need to do a lot of extra work and don't know what to do with yourself, then you can just take grad math classes when you're ready to do so.

[stony-p]

As well as ecology, there is bioinformatics. Very much more the genetic/molecular biology side of things, with a healthy splash of computers and mathematics.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics

[torgos]

CS, physics, economics, engineering, statistics, some subsets of biology.

[Dark Avorian]

Also, why do you feel so strongly that you need to double major. Double majoring is pretty rare except in the few schools that don't have minors, and even there it isn't common. The most I remember hearing about Wesleyan, but that's because they a) don't have any minors, and b) have no distribution/gen ed/ core curriculum requirements

[torgos]

If he can clear out most gen eds with AP credits, he'll have plenty of credits open to pull off a double major.

[TheKrikkitWars]

If there are the right courses available doing a Chem minor focused purely on Theoretical Chem, (or if you like Chemical Physics) would probably be a good bet, there's definately a need for people who are interested in all aspects of Computation or in Functional Analysis there...

[Dark Avorian]

If he can clear out most gen eds with AP credits, he'll have plenty of credits open to pull off a double major.

True, but I still feel it needs saying that double majoring is not something that is as common as you might think from the amount you hear about it.

[314man]

Hey just thinking out loud here, but I find double majoring extremely common. And if not that, it is at least a major and minor or a major and two minors. Having just a major is the bare minimum allowed in a university and it leaves almost half your credits as electives, which to me seems like squandering an opportunity to use those electives count for something more. Is this just in Canada? Or maybe just in my university? (I haven't followed how the system works in other universities)
Typically if you want to stay within one field, you'd go with a specialization, which is basically a step above a major.

[jawdisorder]

I feel like that is true for most of the majors in my school except the engineering disciplines have a much larger amount of required coursework and even the "electives" are just a choice within a group of three or four classes. Despite this I know that double majors are very common in engineering here since even with all of the required work, depending on degree, there is a lot of overlap with either math, physics, or computer science. For example, I am in the Computer Engineering program and to get a double major with computer science ends up being only a few more classes and to get a certificate (University equivalent of a minor) in both math and physics is also only a few extra classes in either area.

[Raeil]

Honestly, I'd advise picking something you love, figuring out what you would have to take in order to get the double major, and then trying it before you declare it. I'm having to do a change of major for the third time because I have only now realized that, even though I loved high school and calc-based physics, modern physics is not for me. It's not a big deal, but it's a pain to get the paperwork done. If you discover this somewhat through the major, as I did, then you can easily get a minor with just a few more courses at most universities.

Good luck to you, though, whatever you decide!

[Andromeda321]

Hey just thinking out loud here, but I find double majoring extremely common. And if not that, it is at least a major and minor or a major and two minors. Having just a major is the bare minimum allowed in a university and it leaves almost half your credits as electives, which to me seems like squandering an opportunity to use those electives count for something more. Is this just in Canada? Or maybe just in my university? (I haven't followed how the system works in other universities)
Typically if you want to stay within one field, you'd go with a specialization, which is basically a step above a major.

This honestly depends a lot on the school (and honestly to a minor extent the country, but I think being Canadian doesn't make as much a difference here). I went to a technical university where engineering and physics essentially had every class scheduled out from the beginning so even minors were kinda rare if that was your major. There were double majors but they were usually something like engineering and English (engineering was 140 credits, English 30- no I am not joking) because of a strange rule that required x number of credit hours from outside your initial major that was essentially impossible to do if you were, say, physics and astronomy because there was too much overlap.

So hey I always thought double majors were overrated in most cases perhaps because of my silly university's system- after all you can do all the classes you want and ignore the ones you don't like and they still appear on your transcript. Making a major impossible was nice because my minor was basically all I REALLY wanted to do!

[TGARCH-M]

math and economics would be great

you can take PhD level econ courses that use real analysis and topology and such. Math will definitely facilitate your econ experience. Read some papers from journals and you will see they are pretty math intensive.

or if you like econometrics (very interesting imo), do statistics. statistics is awesome, too.

if you do math and econ you will have a lot of options in life. If you do math and stat, you can always do econ later, and stat is a pretty key science. Also, it can be very theoretical vis a vis mathematical statistics, stochastic processes etc...

[torgos]

or if you like econometrics (very interesting imo),

Now there's a rare sentiment!

[TGARCH-M]

Now there's a rare sentiment!

Econometrics is cool because you can find out what's really going in the world.

Sometimes I forget that people think economists are crazy when they say they can put a value on a statistical life using econometrics. I guess I'm blase.

But econometrics can tell you the probability you're in a relationship as a function of the number of hours you spend on the internet. (Lol ok maybe we dont need metrics for that..)

Also econometrics uses a ton of linear algebra...so if you like that...then yea..

[torgos]

I'm not saying that econometrics isn't useful- merely that it's very, very boring to learn.

[Dopefish]

I might point out that double majoring isn't necessarily 'better' than say, doing a concentrated honours.

Math compliments almost everything nicely so anything you do want to combine it with would likely work out fine, but spreading yourself between multiple subjects can have the unwanted side effect of you being good at a couple things, but master of neither. Again, math probably is better off than other double majors since it's so applicable, but it's just something to keep in mind.