For Students of Mathematics & Statistics
UWM Undergraduate Bulletin
UWM Graduate Bulletin
UWM Student Online Handbook
UWM Career Development Center
Study Skills Guide
Interesting Mathematical Books
American Math Society (AMS) careers information
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) career information
Mathematical Association of America (MAA) information for students
Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) information for students
American Statistical Association (ASA) information for students
FSU WWW Virtual Library
Mathematics Careers, Sloan Career Center
Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Mathematics, 2006-2007
A Dartmouth University web page on marketable skills
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) information on finding jobs
Purdue University resume and cover letter resources
The Jobweb, National Association of Colleges and Employers
Operations Research, Bureau of Labor and Statistics
Cornell University School of Operations Research and Information Engineering
Operations Research
Comments on Computational Mathematics
Undergraduate level: Matlab (check the student version), O-Matrix (Windows), or
Octave (public domain, Windows and Linux) are excellent programs to do anything you need. I find, personally,
that symbolic platforms are not totally essential because when you actually examine what you are doing with it
it turns out to be graphical or estimation. If you can't calculuate something symbolically by hand, it is often too
complicated to use the output of a program like Maple or Mathematica. In my mathematical modeling course it often turns out
to be more convenient to use spreadsheets, or some combination of spreadsheets and Octave.
Here is a web page with Matlab/Octave information and examples.
Here is a web page with an Octave tutorial.
Graduate level: My graduate students often have the experience of
running into difficulties from too much dependency on interpreted programming environments rather than creating their
own compiled code. When computing, decide ahead of time what computational complexity
you expect in the the end. Students often make the mistake of using packages like
Matlab, Octave, Maple, etc., because it seems much easier to start and protype algorithms.
Often, they start well but end disappointed
because the object of the computation, once all debugging is done, is too challenging for these slow interpreted
platforms. I always note that the difference between writing your own code in C, C++ or Fortran and, say, Matlab,
is not very significant. The computational experiments at the end will kill you if they take days or weeks per
experiment rather than hours! For this reason,
I recommend that you start with the programming language C or Fortran even if it
seems more difficult to set the data structures.
I prefer Fortran for its simplicity in programming yet powerful
capabilities.
Fortran (2003) software repositories are available on this link.
Here is a web page with Matlab/Octave information and examples.
Here is a web page with an Octave tutorial.
Here is a web page on GFortran, a good linux package for modern Fortran (I use Ubuntu).
Gnuplot is an excellent graphics program to go along with Octave or
Fortran.
It's Essential to Get Organized!
You need to "fight fire with fire." That is,
when every institution around you is becoming hyper-organized pay attention to the system and put yourself
in sync with it! To do that be organized (or even hyper-organized) yourself, at least with the items that are relevant.
By writing everything down it is not in your head and you can relax. Be sure to keep a significant part of your
life without a system, living emotionally or intuitively on your own free time, or you will go crazy eventually.
cf. Julie Morgenstern, "Time Management from the Inside Out," Holt Paperbacks, 2000.
Winning* the Game of Life
By the way, experience tells us time and time again that
overly 'aggressive' or 'cheating' players, those taking short-cuts, and non-team players eventually lose out.
You, however, doing it the right way, playing with team spirit, will succeed through preseverence, hard
work and attention to detail and quality.
What are the handicaps or constraints you are 'playing' with, for example, family obligations, extra job,
health issues, or perhaps unwillingness to 'play' nasty? Or, how about a desire to have a complete life
and not be so focused on work that you missed out on living? Compared to others who are getting ahead, if
you play with one arm tied behind your back, and 'lose' the game but with a hard fight, who really won? Don't
fall into the other guys' trap of glorifying them because they 'beat' you, forgetting about the constraints you
are playing with.
An example: You are in a course and it seems that your peers are trying very hard to do better than you, that
they are putting themselves forward aggressively and the professor seems to respond to that. You hate this and
the whole course starts to go down the drain for you. What to do? Well, change the "measure of you" and the tactics.
How about
deciding consciously that the others can have their A grade but you will keep on learning the material as best
you can, that what YOU learned is your measure of success, not any grade or score. I am confident that you
will before long start to relax and learn a lot, noticing that you like the class better. You will not be
worried about the other students but only yourself. And perhaps you will ace the course and they won't.
An analogy: Every soccer team has a star forward who scores and gains the glory. Did you ever notice how they
rest and let you defenders work very hard without any glory? You defenders are looking all around, covering the
field and heading off all potential danger, sacrificing your body for the cause, and helping on the offense, too.
Many have argued that defense wins championships. Is it like this for you at school or work, that someone
seems to always claim the credit while acting like a prima donna? Just change the measure in your game, and
remember that a team (like your work place) cannot win without the defenders. Keep it up and eventually
they will notice how good you are in 'defense.' Defense, of course, is analogous to doing the hard, everyday
work at the office, and the forwards are the ones doing less and receiving the accolades. Don't worry.
Don't be jealous. Be serious and hard working.
Just realize that the future needs to be accounted for by organizing your goals, motivations, and activities.
Not emotionally, rather more calculated. Make a plan, perhaps every hour,
day, week, month, year, depending on your lifestyle and personality. The plan should be written and
well-organized if possible. You must remember that it is only a recommendation to yourself, that
you are simply readjusting your course at the moment to remain with good overall progress as the winds of life carry you off track. That is, it has
to be flexible or it will be a new source of anxiety. You will need to revise the plan often to
account for changing events or motivations. Without a goal you go nowhere.
Now with your concentration and emotions focused on the present moment you practically zero anxiety, only
effort or enjoyment, etc.
For example, suppose you are an NFL quarterback in the first game of the season. You are worried about
wining the Superbowl, so on the first play you through all the way down field. You will very shortly be
taken out. To win the Superbowl you must remember that you have to go step by step, and there will be loses
and setbacks. You have to win a lot of games, but first you have to score. Before you score you
should get a few first downs. Before that you should make take some yardage. So, to further your Superbowl aspirations,
on the first play of the first game you do a running play to gain 3 yards.
Nothing new here, right? Pretty obvious for sure.
Well, it seems that everybody has the idea built-in that winning in competition, vanquishing the opponent,
is the absolute goal, the only one that matters. It's that our
social structure values glory, wealth, and domination. Honestly, most of us do not have the
personal fortitude and strong character to resist going the wrong way (trying to win at all costs).
"Pulic Opinion is a weak tyrant compared with your own private opinion. What a man thinks
of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate." - Henry David Thoreau,
"Walden" (I.e., Remember that other people make the tactics and rules, often not what you want. Design your own game.)
"Man is the artificer of his own happiness." - Henry David Thoreau,
journal entry Jan. 21, 1838 (I.e., Choose the game you play, get out of a bad game and there is no
longer any measure of you, good or bad. You are happier.)
"Any fool can make a rule, any fool will mind it." - Henry David Thoreau,
journal entry Feb. 3, 1860 (I.e., Don't foolishly walk into the wrong 'game'
for you, whose rules are made by someone else's false or limited priorities.)
Making Decisions
On the twentieth day the percentage of improvement for the group that
practiced daily was about 24 percent. The second group did not improve at all.
The third group, which had only visualized improving but did not actually practice,
did about 23 percent better!
Richardson's article in the Research Quarterly mentions that
the most effective visualization happens when the person feels and sees what he/she is doing
(http://www.llewellynencyclopedia.com/article/244). You can search the internet for many
such examples and related ideas.
Get Smart! Learn from Cats.
Cats depend on intuition.
Cats thrive on exploration
and learning. They learn by trial and error, observation, and imitation.
Instinct/intuition guides them as well.
Cats learn best by breaking the process down to small incremental steps.
They are naturally curious and, by the way, curiosity never killed anything
other than a little time.
Cats know the value of being relaxed but always alert, and
they usually do not let themselves get stressed by outside forces.
They like to have fun and they do not let themselves become
so serious as to forget to enjoy life. They don't need fancy toys.
Cats are not afraid to leap to great heights- or fall down.
However they always look before they leap.
They instinctively know when to quit, when it isn't worth
pursuing. On the flip side, they are also very patient, clever and stealthy when hunting.
Cats are never sleep deprived, they
nap adequately to make sure they're always at top of their game.
They manage themselves well.
Cats stretch frequently and keep fit
through exercise, but not mindless, repetitive exercise. Rather, they exercise through
fun and games or personal challenges.
And they don't over eat.
They only use their claws when necessary. Sometimes they
do use them, and they are sharp.
Most importantly, cats are not motivated by social status!
Some of My Interests
Amateur (Ham) Radio. My radio amateur call sign is N9UR. I have been
licensed since 1975, licensed as extra class since 1977.
I participate in soccer where I manage an over 40 men's team, BD Chaos, (indoor & outdoor), I like
to work out in good weather by in-line skating, biking (road and mountain), and kayaking. I manage to remain able to do these things by regular
yoga practice. Of all these the yoga is most difficult for me, as
I have neglected to work on flexibility and balance most of my life, besides the fact that
this is a very challenging style.
Salamanca, Spain. Thanks to my good friend J. Vigo-Aguiar, I was
able to live and work on research in Salamanca Spain for 7 months during 2005. It gave me an opportunity
to use my sabbatical to learn new things, mathematics, spanish, and living with a different life-style.
I always try to go to Spain whenever possible.
I am an Irish-Certified Whiskey Taster: