Miley Cyrus' Twerk Team Audition

Ok so maybe the Disney Darling isn't auditioning for the Twerk Team, but I think it's safe to say that little Hannah Montana is now all grown up and doing whatever the f*ck she wants.




I support it.

Mathematics and your future

Yesterday was Pi Day, and I’m a big nerd, so the above statement got me to thinking.

Remember when you were sitting in your high school algebra class, and someone said "Why do we have to learn this?  We're never gonna need this in real life."  Then you thought to yourself, "Hey, that guy's right" or if you were anything like me, you thought, "He's just making excuses because he doesn't get it."  If your teacher was worth a hill of beans she likely responded with “But the problem solving skills you will learn will be invaluable tools in your future” or something to that effect.  If not, your math teacher sucked! might have had a more cleaver response.

Well ladies and gentlemen, for most of your peers, it's a true statement, they will never need an algebraic function to do their jobs.  However for those of us that "got it" and even *gasp* liked it, those basic algebra skills and equations and our understanding of them, is currently paying the bills.  Not to mention opening up what I feel will be a major job market in the very near future.  I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Think about this: we live in the Information Age. We're raising a generation that has always had access to the "information super highway." All of this information is fluid, constantly changing hands, and being augmented.  Tracking those exchanges and changes, and understanding the “whos,” “whats,” “wheres,” and “whens” of this motion is the goal of every business entity at some level.  But how?  Synthesize this massive amount of information down to its most integral parts, and quantify it, and viola, data!  

All of those seemingly useless algebraic formulas are starting to make sense when analyzing data.  The companies with the best data analysts will know how to specifically target their customer base through marketing and advertising.  Think about the ads on the right side of your Facebook page.  Additionally, they will be able to better track their sales, expenses, etc. thus making them much more efficient businesses all because of a little math.

So while most of you will never use Pythagoras' Theorem (which, by the way, is how they determine the size of your television set), the rest of us will be getting paid by crunching numbers and telling the networks which commercials to shoot into your living room using linear equations.