Link: The Best and Worst Jobs in the U.S. – WSJ.com

“It’s a lot more than just some boring subject that everybody has to take in school…
It’s the science of problem-solving.”
— Ms. Courter (a research mathematician in the article below)

I’m not linking to this article to make lumberjacks feel bad. But this is a small part of a body of evidence that there’s something in mathematics that can bring great joy into our lives. You can’t see what it is from this article; you generally can’t see what it is when people write about math. I honestly think you have to start doing mathematics to feel it. I’ll try to put more on this site that might lead you to feel it.

Note that that top six jobs are mathematically heavy. Part of the reason matematician is such a great job is that there’s a tremendous amount of intellectual freedom. Sadly, most of us experience the opposite when we take math courses in school. Who here associates mathematics with freedom or choice? And yet, making choices is at the heart of mathematics.