Ten 1 ALL NEW 2 reasons doing math is more awesome than Prom 3

1. Ten1ALL NEW 2reasons doing math is more awesome than Prom3 Fritz Reitz, Ph.D., Research Engineer, Instrument Development Laboratory, Center on Human Development and Disability, University of Washington 1 depending on how you count 2 many are in fact re-hashed 3 this claim is untrue

2. 0. Math doesn't suck, force-feeding sucks this is cool  this is a set of inter-dependent 2ndorder partial differential equations this remains cool until I force the details upon you at length

3. 1. The truth will set you free, but first will piss you off in my day, (a) the "popular people" hated the "math nerds", (b) the math nerds hated the popular people, (c) neither hated people who were awesome at knitting. (or serial killers, for that matter) why? everybody worries at least a little that they're not smart enough, pretty enough, etc., so peers doing better at something that matters elicits a fear/anger reaction (though people are so complex that it needn't) very few people are insecure about their knitting skills

4. take-home messages • if you enjoy dressing up & dancing, go to prom • if you enjoy math puzzles, do those know that they didn't invent their subculture, they're as swept-up by theirs as you by yours learn to knit. nobody hates a knitter and it's one of precious few ways to represent a hyperbolic plane 

5. 2. Because beer commercials don't own the word "fun" for similar reasons, I have never seen a commercial where people clink MGDs together upon acing a math midterm not that partying isn't awesome, it just doesn't have a monopoly on “awesome”, people are too varied and complex to characterize preferences so simply some people want to do math, they’re just not in the commercials

6. know this  do bother to “run the numbers”… 3. claim your 3.5 years of vacation The Dilbert guide to personal finance Everything you need to know about financial planning • Make a will. • Pay off your credit cards. • Get term life insurance if you have a family to support. • Fund your 401(k) to the maximum. • Fund your IRA to the maximum. • Buy a house if you want to live in a house and you can afford it. • Put six months’ expenses in a money market fund. • Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues) hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

7. retirement age +/- your 1% assume: • you save $1k/month (in 2013 dollars) • 3% inflation • need $500k to retire on • you get 7% return on investments • person sitting next to you gets 8% return • at 27.3 year mark, they turn off their alarm clock wake up at noon, and fire up the xbox • you wake up to your alarm, and go to work for 3.5 more years

8. 4. power to contribute something new field titles are sometimes arbitrary, and sometimes used up, but there is fresh terrain in between, often by adding "mathematical-" e.g. mainstream biology is not very mathematical on the whole, while mathematical biologists know it's not an accident that > locusts gestate for a prime number of years > pesticides can make insect populations explode > some diseases (cancer?) may simply be states of interdependent differential equations

9. 5. power to stand out (not technically an "all new" topic) applies DOUBLY to the liberal arts, (google "vi hart") especially with the advent of RP (bathsheba.com)

10. 6. which pays in various ways starting & median pay for top 10 bachelor level jobs 100% math- Intensive jobs largely absent from beer comm-ercials

11. 7. math underpins technology, and technology is a moving target physical reality is non-verbal. it speaks math. coffee spills at 9.81 m/s2. you can't be versed in the whole universe, but the more you can speak its language, the less lost you'll be as new technologies and phenomena emerge, like…

12. 8. rocket science (google “copenhagen suborbitals”)

13. and Unity3D/Playmaker

14. and Unity3D/Playmaker has brought game programming mostof the way to you. if you can spackle things with a rotation matrix here and there, it helps

15. 9. don't miss out on physics "...and God said ' ' and there was light" you can say it in English using high school calculus, but it takes longer ->

16. and kinetic energy is “just” relativitymr = mc2 = mc2+ 1/2 mv2+ 3/8 mv4/c2 + blah blah blah

17. oh, and magnetism doesn't exist in a sense. it’s a “fictional force” like centrifugal and coriolis force components in a rotating room. the magnet on your fridge can be fully explained by static electricity and special relativity.

18. people who did AWESOME thought they did PRETTY GOOD! people who did ok thought they did ok people who suuUUCKED thought they did PRETTY GOOD! 10. the Dunning-Kruger effect they gave people complex tasks and asked them to grade themselves  when you’re wrong enough, confidence returns!

19. so next time you're 100% sure that something is “stupid”… here's hoping you're right! (and that you’re one of the people who has done enough of their homework to know the difference) freitz@uw.edu