Would you rather be good at math or english?

[Scott Shepherd]

Following up on the "why can't people write" thread, I've thought about that several times over the last few weeks. I started to think, why would writing be more important than, say, Math? I thought about a ton of jobs that had math, but english didn't really mean so much. Take software programming. You can write an application for the iphone, mostly using math and code, and make a million dollars or more. You can be a carpenter and build houses and buildings and not be able to use "your" or "you're" in the proper context. You can build machines, do woodworking, metalworking, work with stone and many other things.

It made me think- would I rather be good at math or english, and I'd have to pick math. Math has got me a long way in my career. Without it, I wouldn't own a house or have the things I have. However, I can't say English has been such a great provider for my income. It's nice to know, but can it make me money? Pay my mortgage? Put food on my table? So far, not so much for me.

Of course, English is very important, and this thread is done tongue in cheek, but it did make me think about which one I'd rather be good at. Not saying you can only have 1, but if you could be great at one and okay at the other, which would it be and why?

[Mike Henderson]

I'll take math. Mathematics describes the world. For example, in my field (electrical engineering) math describes how circuits work. So the question is, "Is God a mathematician?"

[That reminds me of a joke. What's the difference between a surgeon and God? Answer: God doesn't think he's a surgeon.]

Mike

[David Weaver]

I will take "both". You can't really be good at mathematics without being a good reader. I don't mean like calculus, i mean like theoretical mathematics.

I work in a profession that is very mathematically oriented, but each year, clients expect more out of us. The mathematical ability is a given, but the ability to write, communicate and speak to them (the clients) is a little more important every year. The people who can't do both are finding it harder to get a job or keep a job.

[Rick Moyer]

Kinda like asking "what would you rather do without, arts or science". Just depends on your personality type I suppose. Everybody obviously needs some of both, but most would probably lean one way over another.
To answer your question, though, I would lean toward math, probably because it's always interested me and therefore I became better at it (I think).

[Greg Peterson]

Math, for it's pure logic. When was the last time a well written paper put a man on the moon?

[David G Baker]

Mathematics.

[Gary Hodgin]

Both are important, but I rather be considered better in math.

[paul cottingham]

English. I'd rather be understood than clever.

[daniel lane]

Both are very important, but if I had to choose, I'd choose math. Given my choice of hobbies (and even career) I'd rather be a happy hermit than a literate incompetent.

[Don Alexander]

a mathematical genius who can't communicate what he knows wouldn't be worth much ................ though i tend to prefer math to english myself

[Caspar Hauser]

Math, for it's pure logic. When was the last time a well written paper put a man on the moon?

I seem to remember a couple of well written speeches by a Mr Kennedy which seemed to get the whole thing off the ground.

[Glenn Vaughn]

The question should probably have been "Math or Language" (as in communication skills).

While english is the language of choice in most of North America, it is not as universal as we would like to believe. Superior math skills will be of little use if you cannot communicate. IMHO there are two ways poor communication skills can handicap you; first, you must be able to communicate in order to pass results to others. The second is that poor communication skills can cause your credibility to be doubted.

I work in the IT field and communication is very important - especially now that many of the suppoort people speak (and write) english as a second language - sometimes so poorly that it is almost impossible to understand what they mean. We had a CIO that was from India - this led to the hiring of a number of people from India - primarily in networking. It took a long time for the staff to be able to understand each other.

MKy previous job was in an IT shop where the Manager was Cantonese and one of the analysts was mandarin. The manager was second generation american the analyst was born in the geogrphic center of China. Even though the analyst spoke fluent english, he could not communicate abstract ideas in english. Most of our meetings were reduced to talking then using paper to draw what was meant. After 15 years there the ability to exchange ideas had not improved very much. The manager had very good communication skills bout had the same problem with the analyst since they each spoke a different form of chinese and neither could speak or understand the others dialect.

Math is very important but so is language. If your language skills are poor it is much more difficult to learn math (or pretty much anything else).

[Dan Hintz]

Glenn,

I'm sure Steve's mention choice of math or English was not meant to be taken so literally... proper written/oral skills was the obvious intent.



Despite my career, I would have to choose math. If you had a passion and skill for it, you wouldn't need great language skills, as you would have the communication skill necessary to show someone else in the art what you have done step by step.

[dennis thompson]

I'm retired from a career in Finance. In my career I went from financial analyst, to supervisor, to manager, to director, to vice president. Each of those progressions was a result of strong communication skills (i.e. English) which were far more important than my math skills. I'd choose English/Communication
Dennis

[Dan Hintz]

Dennis,

Would it be fair to say, however, that you would not have been presented with those advancement opportunities had it not been for some strong math skills that allowed you into the field in the first place?